A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday cleared the way for students recruited to a sham university set up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to sue the government to recoup what they paid to enroll.
The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit involved “the University of Farmington,” a fake institution the government set up nearly a decade ago to try to catch visa fraudsters who it surmised were trying to stay in the U.S. after their for-profit institutions closed.
A 2019 article in Inside Higher Ed about the sting operation, which started during the Obama administration but ramped up during Donald Trump’s presidency, said that “some have argued that in creating a fake university that had all the exterior trappings of legitimacy—Farmington advertised all the appropriate accreditation and regulatory approvals—the government deceived vulnerable students and preyed on their desperation to stay in the U.S.”
Tuesday’s ruling by the federal appeals court found that the government was not immune from the 2020 lawsuit because it entered into contracts with hundreds of people to provide educational services. The lawsuit was brought by Teja Ravi, who paid the so-called university $12,500 for tuition.
