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NY Chinatown Law Firms Raided for Fake Asylum Bids
By wchung | 21 Jun, 2025
The FBI raided at least 10 New York Chinatown and Flushing law firms Tuesday and charged 26 people with immigration fraud for helping concoct stories of persecution at the hands of Chinese authorities to support asylum bids.
Six of those arrested are lawyers. The rest are mostly non-attorney employees at 10 Manhattan Chinatown and Flushing immigration law firms that had filed 1,900 asylum applications on behalf of Chinese clients. The suspects are accused of having fabricated detailed stories of persecution and physical abuse at the hands of China’s authorities for their clients to memorize in support of their asylum applications.
Some of the female clients were coached to claim that they had suffered forced abortions under China’s one-child policy. Most were coached to claim religious persecution for being Christians or members of the Falun Gong spiritual sect.
Many of the applicants were referred to the Full Gospel Church in Flushing to receive instruction on the basic tenets of Christianity, with a focus on acquiring details likely to help them fool immigration officials in exchange for donations. A church official named Liying Lin even provided certificates certifying attendance at church and/or the client’s baptism, according to the charging documents.
All 26 defendants were charged with conspiring to commit immigration fraud and were arraigned Tuesday night.
The defendants were “weaving elaborate fictions” and making it “more difficult for those who are legitimately seeking refuge in this country,” said Preet Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Tuesday’s raid was the largest of the roundups of immigration lawyers, paralegals, translators and office managers in New York City in connection with asylum fraud allegations. Immigration fraud has become widespread among people seeking to immigrate to the US from the Chinese diaspora, according to experts.
“This is an industry,” said Peter Kwong, an Asian American studies and urban affairs professor at Hunter College. “Everybody knows about it, and these violations go on all the time.” Kwong even expressed the opinion that asylum cases initiated in New York City by people from China were mostly fraudulent.
Migrants from China are the largest group of people seeking and receiving asylum in the US. The 8,600 Chinese immigrants who received asylum in fiscal 2011 comprise over 34 percent of all successful asylum seekers.
The probe leading to Tuesday’s raid was triggered by the similarities that New York federal immigration officials noticed among the details of many of the cases they were handling.
US immigration law allows the granting of asylum to those who, within a year of arriving in country, show that they have suffered persecution or have a “well-founded fear of future persecution” on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
These cases of asylum fraud appear to lend credence to the many Chinese officials who have persistently denied allegations by US rights activists of forced abortions or persecutions of Christians or other religious minorities.
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