WASHINGTON
\nAn attorney in Washington state promised \u201cmiracles\u201d to tens of thousands of immigrants seeking legal status in the United States. Instead, Alexandra Lozano created fake stories of domestic abuse and human trafficking to apply for humanitarian visas without her clients\u2019 knowledge, according to several lawsuits and a legal ethics investigation.
\nThey say she preyed on immigrants\u2019 desperation to drain their bank accounts while leaving them at risk of deportation. She is accused hiring workers who didn\u2019t have proper legal credentials and building an assembly-line system to rush through applications, even copying clients\u2019 signatures onto documents they never saw.
\n\u201cI put the trust of my family with her,\u201d 30-year-old Gabriel Martinez Garcia said. After they paid $30,000, he said Lozano duped his family and got his mother placed in removal proceedings despite her marriage to a naturalized US citizen. \u201cWe believed in her and then she just let us down.\u201d
\nLozano\u2019s firm, Luz del Camino Legal, closed this month amid a barrage of allegations. She permanently surrendered her law license rather than face discipline from the bar association, and denies wrongdoing. While federal data shows immigration service scams are rising sharply, Lozano\u2019s alleged scheme stands out for its scale. The bar says her signature is on more than 53,000 pending cases.
\nIt\u2019s unclear how many cases were fraudulent or to what extent her clients were complicit. The ones suing her say they had no idea. The consequences of her downfall are hitting the immigration system \u201clike a tidal wave,\u201d said Erika Gonzalez, an attorney with the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking.
\nThe Trump administration last year started overhauling the humanitarian programs Lozano allegedly exploited, claiming a surge in applications since 2020 was a sign of widespread fraud. The administration tightened the programs\u2019 restrictions and slowed processing rates, which advocacy groups say will hurt legitimate victims. The visas are meant for people who were trafficked or abused
\nLozano specialized in getting visas through the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 and the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, which covers all genders.These programs seek to protect victims from having their immigration status weaponized by abusers. Evidence standards are more flexible, making the system more accessible to victims. But it\u2019s also easier for an unscrupulous firm to exploit, immigration attorneys say.
\nLozano\u2019s firm probed clients for issues at home or work, then spun them as abuse cases that didn\u2019t meet the threshold for these humanitarian programs, according to attorneys representing dozens of her old clients. Although clients quickly secured work permits, they often faced trouble years later when seeking permanent residency and their claims faced greater scrutiny.
\nLozano denies mass immigration fraudAngelo Calfo, an attorney representing Lozano, said clients were expected to review their applications before signing and blamed them for any false statements.
\n\u201cAlexandra\u2019s practice has always been to fight for her clients, zealously pursue every lawful option available to them, and support their efforts to build lives in this country,\u201d his statement said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON An attorney in Washington state promised \u201cmiracles\u201d to tens of thousands of immigrants seeking legal status in the United States. Instead, Alexandra Lozano created fake stories of domestic abuse and human trafficking to apply for humanitarian visas without her clients\u2019 knowledge, according to several lawsuits and a legal ethics investigation. They say she preyed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99588,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99633,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99623\/revisions\/99633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}