SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — From her hometown in India in 2010, Bhanu Challa said she had no reason to doubt that Tri-Valley University was a legitimate American school where she could pursue a master’s degree. Its website featured smiling students in caps and gowns and promised a leafy campus in a San Francisco Bay Area suburb.
Months later, her hands were in cuffs as federal investigators questioned her motives for being in the U.S. Authorities told her that Tri-Valley was a sham school. It was selling documents that allowed foreigners to obtain U.S. student visas, and in some cases work in the country, while providing almost no instruction, according to federal investigators.
“I was blank, totally blank …,” she said, recalling her shock. “I didn’t know what to do, who I could approach.”
Tri-Valley is among at least half a dozen schools shut down or raided by federal authorities in recent years over allegations of immigration fraud. Like Tri-Valley, they had obtained permission from U.S. immigration officials to admit foreign students.
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“We’ve put in a greater system of checks and balances,” said Carissa Cutrell, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security Investigations’ Student and Exchange Visitor Program.
At Tri-Valley, Challa said she paid nearly $3,000 for her first semester, but never received an assignment or an exam. She was unhappy that she wasn’t learning and was taking steps to transfer when the school was raided in 2011. She later completed her MBA and is now working in the U.S.
“I had to pursue my studies here, I had to get a job,” she said. “I was the first person in my family to come to the U.S.”
