Thousands of immigrants scammed by attorney exploiting humanitarian visas, lawsuits say
An attorney in Washington state promised “miracles” 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’ knowledge, according to several lawsuits and a legal ethics investigation. They say she preyed on immigrants’ desperation to drain their bank accounts while leaving them at risk of deportation.
She is accused hiring workers who didn’t have proper legal credentials and building an assembly-line system to rush through applications, even copying clients’ signatures onto documents they never saw.
“I put the trust of my family with her,” 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. “We believed in her and then she just let us down.”
