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[Previous entry: "USCIS provides Guidence on Adjustment of Status for Asylees"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Maine Governor Orders Immigration Status Be Kept Confidential"] 04/09/2004 Entry: "Former Detroit Immigration Officer Gets Prison" According to a Detroit Free Press story, Janice Halstead, the former federal immigration officer who was part of a local scheme to illegally sell visas to Arab immigrants, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and bribery in July 200 and was sentenced to 2 years in prison by a federal judge in Detroit on Thursday. Click here to read the Free Press Story. Janice Halstead, the former federal immigration officer who was part of a local scheme to illegally sell visas to Arab immigrants, was sentenced to 2 years in prison by a federal judge in Detroit on Thursday. U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn also sentenced Halstead to 3 years of supervised release once her prison term is fulfilled. Under the terms of her sentence, Halstead could be released early for good behavior. Cohn recommended that she serve the term in a federal prison in Tennessee, where she now lives. Halstead has agreed to surrender to federal authorities in six weeks, when she will begin serving her sentence. According to investigators, from 1998 through 2002 Halstead supplied visas to two middlemen who sold them to immigrants from Yemen and Lebanon at a price of $6,000 to $10,000 per visa. Halstead and the middlemen then split the profits. Federal investigators said 130 immigrants bought the visas. The U.S. government deported about 12 people who had the illegal visas; the rest couldn't be found. Federal officials arrested Halstead in April 2003, while she was still working as an information officer at the Mt. Elliot office of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. Two others were also charged in the scheme. Zoha Madarani, who runs a private immigration consulting service in Dearborn, is scheduled to be tried in May on charges of conspiracy and immigrant smuggling. The other, Salah Al-Solihi of Detroit, pleaded guilty to attempted smuggling and conspiracy and is awaiting sentencing.
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