UPI: "U.S. diplomat sentenced to five years in visa scheme"

Michael Sestak, a former US Foreign Service Officer and one-time chief of the non-immigrant visa unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, has been sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a money-for-visas scheme, which US prosecutors called “one of the largest bribery schemes involving a Foreign Service Officer in the history of the United States.” The ex-diplomat admitted to approving nearly 500 visas over a two-year period in exchange for $3 million in bribes, which he funneled through China and invested in real estate in Thailand.

Sestak, a former police officer and US Marshal, collaborated with Binh Tang Vo and his sister, Hong Vo, both US citizens living in Vietnam, and their cousin, Truc Tranh Huynh, a Vietnamese citizen, in the scheme that charged up to $70,000 per visa for applicants, even if they had been previously denied. Last month, the Justice Department announced that Binh Tang Vo was sentenced to eight years in prison plus forfeiture of nearly $5.1 million. Even with that forfeiture, millions in funds allegedly obtained through the visa bribery scheme remain unaccounted for.

Sestak is the most recent consular officer to be punished for selling visas, since the State Department started investigating and prosecuting for visa fraud in 1999. A Diplomatic Security spokesperson told Vice that as of 2013, twenty-four American employees at US Embassies and Consulates worldwide have been convicted of bribery, conflicts of interest, and visa and passport fraud, including husband-and-wife team Acey Johnson and Long Lee, who were convicted in 2003 of a visa-selling scheme at the US Embassy in Hanoi that continued in Sri Lanka, earning them $700,000.

Gale Smith of Diplomatic Security said their agents are now embedded in consular affairs departments and work with local authorities to monitor fraud and corruption. “Many US embassies now have a special program within the Regional Security Office to investigate both external and employee fraud,” she stated to Vice in an email. “This special group of investigators works alongside host-country law enforcement.”

The Simple Life

Hello, neighbor!

I visited my parents this week in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They live right next to an Amish farm—which Protima was very excited to find out as she's thinking about joining the Amish. Only a few hours outside New York City (weekend trip!), the Amish of Lancaster are America's oldest Amish settlement. Arriving at a time when William Penn (the founder of Pennsylvania) was promoting religious and cultural freedom, the Amish are devoted to their religion, plain dress, lack of modern conveniences, and their horse and buggies. They are an important part of Lancaster County culture and the agricultural and business industries in the area. And they make amazing furniture!

Adding New Countries and Enhancing Security in the Visa Waiver Program

The popular United States Visa Waiver Program—currently used by nationals of thirty-eight countries to travel to the US—will now have increased security standards for the participating countries. The Visa Waiver Program allows citizens of designated countries to travel for business or tourism to the US without a visa for stays of up ninety days. Travelers must have a valid Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) approval prior to travel.

In response to the growing threat from individuals who have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State and other groups, and who are nationals of designated visa waiver countries (the US estimates that approximately 3,000 Europeans have traveled to Syria since the conflict began in 2011), the United States will now require that countries participating in the program make changes, most significantly the following:

• Require all passengers to use newer biometric passports that incorporate fingerprints and electronic chips that contain a photograph of the passport holder;

• Allow more American air marshals on flights to the US;

• Require use of the INTERPOL Lost and Stolen Passport Database to screen travelers as well as databases that share travel records and passenger information;

In addition, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will conduct reviews of all the countries participating in the waiver program to ensure they are following its requirements. If they find certain countries have weaker screening processes, there may be additional scrutiny for nationals of those countries at border crossings. 

DHS Secretary Jeh C. Johnson said in a written statement that these security enhancements are "part of this Department’s continuing assessments of our homeland security in the face of evolving threats and challenges, and our determination to stay one step ahead of those threats and challenges.”

While the DHS tightens the requirements, a bill introduced in Congress is proposing to increase the number of countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program. The bill, called the Jobs Originated Through Launching Travel Act (JOLT), had eighty-seven co-sponsors, split between forty-seven Democrats and forty Republicans at the end of July.

JOLT proposes to add Brazil, Poland, Israel, and Croatia, to the list of visa waiver countries by providing the DHS secretary the ability to expand the Visa Waiver Program to countries who failed the current “visa refusal” requirement. Currently this requirement bars countries when more than three percent of its citizens’ visa applications are denied. The bill would allow the DHS secretary to admit countries that have refusal rates as high as ten percent.

The bill would also enhance security requirements for countries participating in the program, including requiring the issuance of electronic biometric passports, although it's not clear if that would remain in the bill as the DHS is preemptively implementing this change. While this bill is being pushed by the travel industry which cites the economic advantages to increased tourism, critics may point to the fact that since 2008 the majority of new undocumented immigrants in the US initially arrived legally. The bill would also change the name of the Visa Waiver Program to the Secure Travel Partnership Program.

"Boosting our economy and improving national security are two of the most critical challenges we face as a nation and the JOLT Act addresses them both," Representative Joe Heck, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Representative Mike Quigley, said in a press release. "Expediting the visa interview process and expanding the Visa Waiver Program will bring more international travelers and tourists to destinations around our country and creates jobs."

Rough Week?

The Unknown Official by Magnús Tómasson in Reykjavík, Iceland.

Los Angeles Times: "Mother who fled Honduras 'to escape abuse, mistreatment' says 'it's the same' in U.S."

Ten immigrant women who have been held in controversial for-profit family Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers have filed complaints with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleging wide-ranging inadequate and neglectful medical care at the facilities. In their complaints, the women allege that they and their children were routinely denied adequate medical care, including:

•  A child vomiting blood was told to drink water and was not referred for off-site medical care for three days.

•  A woman with two broken fingers was denied medical care and advised to “drink more water.”

•  A woman with breast cancer was repeatedly denied medical treatment.

•  More than 250 children were mistakenly given adult doses of a Hepatitis A vaccine.

•  A 5-year-old was repeatedly transferred off site for medical care only to have on-site medical professionals later refuse to  issue prescribed medication.

One of the woman filing a complaint is a twenty-four-year-old Honduran held in Dilley, Texas with her five-year-old daughter. She alleges that it took weeks to get her sick daughter treated, and even after she sought assistance from the Honduran consulate, the detention center refused to prescribe the necessary medications. She said in the Los Angeles Times: “I thought I came to this country to escape abuse, mistreatment and disrespect...But it's the same here.”

Substandard Medical Care

Jonathan Ryan, executive director of San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), one the organizations who assisted in filing the complaints, said to the Los Angeles Times: “The substandard medical care that these women have access to is one of the principal examples of ICE’s inability to manage family detention in a way that is safe...There are mothers and children in these facilities with significant, time-sensitive issues that are not being treated.”

Olivia Lopez, a licensed social worker who quit her job at the Karnes Detention Center, testified recently before Congress that women were being routinely denied adequate medical care and that she had been asked to withhold key medical information from their files, ignore medical complaints, and condone other “unethical” behavior that if ignored would jeopardize her license.

The End of Family Detention?

These complaints come after a July 24 ruling by federal district court Judge Dolly Gee in Flores v. Johnson that the Obama administration's policy of detaining children with their mothers in family detention centers violates the national Flores Settlement Agreement, which in 1997 set standards for the detention and treatment of immigrant children, and ordered the release of the children and their mothers.  

In a letter last Friday, Senators Patrick Leahy and Patty Murray called on DHS to comply with Judge Gee's ruling and “release the children and their mothers without delay” from the Karnes and Dilley detention centers:

The presumptive detention of families is a flawed policy. Most of the families currently detained traveled to the United States seeking refuge from three of the most dangerous countries in the world, countries where women and girls face shocking rates of domestic and sexual violence and gender violence, including murder. Treating these vulnerable women and children like criminals is simply wrong.

Apart from these complaints, for-profit detention centers have also come under criticism for abuses in the detainee work programs. Carl Takei, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project, told the Los Angeles Times after visiting the family detention center in Dilley, Texas: “We have a name for locking people up and forcing them to do real work without wages. It's called slavery[.]”