Students who enrolled in a fake university set up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of a sting operation can sue the U.S., an appeals court ruled last week.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision that dismissed a complaint against the U.S. by an Indian student named Ravi Teja Tiyagurra.
The University of Farmington was created by ICE in 2015 in Michigan with the aim of exposing student visa fraud. The operation was publicly revealed when eight people were indicted for visa fraud and “harboring aliens for profit” in 2019.
According to the appeals court ruling, Ravi said in his 2021 complaint that he was unaware the apparent university was not a real school and paid thousands of dollars to enroll as a student. He alleged that he had “entered into a contract” with the University of Farmington for education services and that the…
