Bribed Immigration Director Frees Alien Criminals

A high-ranking immigration official in Detroit has been charged with bribery and fraud for accepting money and expensive gifts in exchange for freeing numerous illegal immigrants, including one who later killed a college student and two registered sex offenders facing deportation.

The former detention and removal operations director in Detroitâ??s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office (Roy Bailey) accepted more than $50,000 in cash, jewelry, home improvements, landscaping and casino chips to free serious criminals who instead should have been removed from the country.

Federal prosecutors say Bailey, an immigration official for two decades, also conspired with the fugitive owner of a restaurant chain to help illegal aliens gain United States residency through fraudulent marriages to Americans.

His most serious offenses were releasing criminal illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. In 2001 and 2003 Bailey took a $2,000 cash bribe from an immigration attorney representing a violent offender named Bashar Faraj, who at the time was awaiting deportation. Last year Faraj was convicted of murdering a college student and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Bailey also freed two illegal immigrants who appear on the Michigan State Police Sex Offender Registry and were in the process of being deported. Antonio Ivezaj of Milford had served a 1993 prison sentence after an Oakland County jury convicted him of sexual conduct and was put in federal custody for deportation. He gave Bailey more than $5,000 in bribes to release him.

The immigration director released the other convicted sex offender, Salimo Kriko of West Bloomfield, in 2000 after receiving undisclosed bribes from the offenderâ??s immigration attorney.