UC Berkeley students plan to skirt ICE rules with bogus course for foreign classmates

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UC Berkeley students plan bogus course to circumvent ICE guidelines, avoid deportations
Hundreds of students at the University of California at Berkeley are privately discussing a plan to create a "dummy" course.

The bogus class is allegedly being designed solely to help international students on F-1 student visas avoid deportation under new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement  (ICE) regulations -- and the students claim at least one faculty member is on board, Fox News has learned.

The plan, which would likely afoul of laws against immigration fraud if enacted, was reportedly hatched hours after ICE announced Monday that foreign students in the U.S. are required to take some in-person instruction or they will not be allowed to legally remain in the country.

"berkeley students are creating a 1-unit, in-person, student-run class to help international students avoid deportation due to the new ICE regulations," a Berkeley Urban Studies student wrote in a now-deleted tweet, which has been archived by Google. "love my school sometimes."

The tweet, which was shared more than 25,000 times before it was taken down, linked to a longer post stating that a member of the UC Berkeley community had "found a faculty member who will sponser [sic] this." The post noted that a syllabus was being drafted, and that the course was "ONLY for students who are international and need a physical component to remain in the United States."

The longer post has been shared hundreds of times on various UC Berkeley-related social media groups, including several that are publicly available. Academics with ties to UC Berkeley, including Deborah Miranda, have spread news of the course on their own Facebook accounts. (Miranda falsely said in a post that the ICE regulations would affect "Dreamers"; they would in fact affect students with F-1 visas.)

However, some students noted that the plan might not work. Click here for more on our top story.

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Ilhan Omar has paid $878G to new husband’s consulting firm, data show: report
When U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar got remarried in March following her divorce, the Minnesota Democrat tied the knot with a man who was a member of her political consulting team.

Now, campaign data show Omar has paid Tim Mynett’s consulting firm a total of more than $878,000 since 2018 – including $189,000 just weeks after the couple announced they were husband and wife, the New York Post reported.

In the first quarter of this year, Mynett’s E Street Group has received more than $292,000 from Omar’s campaign for digital advertising, fundraising consulting and research services, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis reported in April, citing data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Payments for 2019 totaled more than $500,000, the Star Tribune reported.

Omar’s campaign is her husband’s firm’s biggest client by far, Open Secrets data suggest – with E Street Group receiving about one-third of all the Democrat’s campaign cash, the Washington Examiner reported.

The arrangement is possible because of a 1960s federal anti-nepotism statute that prohibits members of Congress from hiring relatives for government jobs – but does not block family members from doing campaign work, a former chief ethics lawyer from the administration of former President George W. Bush told The New York Post.

“It should not be allowed,” attorney Richard Painter said. “I think it’s a horrible idea to allow it, given the amount of money that goes into these campaigns from special interests.”

Other lawmakers with spouses doing campaign work for them include U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., and U.S. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., the Post reported.

Other related developments:
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Mary Kay Letorneau, who made headlines over affair with student, dead at 58
Mary Kay Letorneau, the former Seattle teacher who was convicted in 1997 of raping a 12-year-old student who she would later marry, died Tuesday from cancer, her lawyer told Q13 FOX of Seattle.

David Gehrke, the attorney, told the news station that Letorneau had been battling the disease for about nine months.

Letorneau pleaded guilty in August 1997 to two counts of second-degree rape with a student who was 13 at the time. (She was 34, married and had four children.) She later married the student, Vili Fualaau, in 2005 — after serving a seven-year prison sentence. He was 22. They had two children and Faulaau filed for a legal separation in 2017, the Q13 FOX report said.

She knew her actions were wrong morally and professionally but took the risks in part because of her diagnosed "hypomania," a type of bipolar depression, Gehrke told local media.

Police discovered the pair about 1:20 a.m. June 19, 1996, in a minivan. Letorneau told officers the boy was 18, raising suspicions among the officers. Fualaau and Letorneau denied there had been any "touching." Instead, they said, Letorneau had been babysitting the boy and took him from her home after she and her husband had a fight.

About two months after the marina incident, Letorneau became pregnant with the couple's first daughter.

Other related developments:
- Teacher who had affair with 12-year-old student, said she 'didn't know' it was illegal

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