Proposed Settlement for Plaintiffs Entrapped at ICE’s Fake N.J. University in 2016.

On January 28, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey granted preliminary approval to a settlement agreement in a class-action lawsuit filed by a group of students who had enrolled at the University of Northern New Jersey, a fake university with no classes or professors that was set up as a sting operation for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to investigate student fraud. The proposed settlement agreement would settle a class-action lawsuit filed by foreign nationals who claimed that they unknowingly enrolled at the fake university. Under the agreement, the government would reverse various adverse immigration actions it took against foreign nationals who enrolled at the fake university and would not use their enrollment against them in evaluating applications for immigration benefits in the future. Enrollment at the nonexistent UNNJ would not in itself be “sufficient grounds” for inadmissibility to the U.S. or deportation without other evidence of wrongdoing.