A mother in the United States says she paid $10,000 to a fake immigration lawyer that turned out to be a character generated by artificial intelligence, leaving her unable to secure the release of her son from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, according to a report by Univision Los Angeles.
The woman, identified only as "Maria" to protect her identity, was trying to help her son, who is being held in federal custody at the ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, California. Fearing he could be deported, she reached out to someone she believed was a licensed immigration attorney to try to secure his release.
She said she never imagined the legal services she paid for were actually being provided by a character created with artificial intelligence rather than a real person.
Contact only by video call
According to Maria, the supposed lawyer never scheduled an in-person meeting. All contact took place through video calls or WhatsApp. Despite the unusual arrangement, she said she trusted the advice she was receiving, unaware that she had already lost thousands of dollars.
"It's not easy to see someone play with your feelings, both emotionally and financially, because it's not easy to come up with $10,000," Maria said, according to Univision Los Angeles.
ICE operates a network of immigration detention facilities across the country, including the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, California, which has drawn scrutiny in the past over conditions for detainees held there while their immigration cases are processed.
Warning signs of an AI-generated impostor
Cases like Maria's show that immigrant families are increasingly vulnerable to this kind of fraud. Marena Lina, a software engineer and programmer, told Univision Los Angeles that people should watch for certain warning signs during video calls with someone claiming to be a lawyer.
She said people should pay attention to the background of a video call, particularly if it looks unusually perfect or too well designed. She also advised watching the person's gestures, since they sometimes do not match what the person is saying.
Immigration attorney Karla Avellina said scammers posing as lawyers are active on major social media platforms, where they advertise legal consultation services. She said what makes these criminals particularly dangerous is that many have enough technical knowledge to stage fake hearings.
How to verify a real immigration lawyer
Jaime Barron, an immigration expert, told N+ Univision that anyone seeking legal help should first confirm that the attorney is properly licensed. As a first step, he recommended searching for the lawyer's official website and calling the listed office number, or visiting the physical office in person to hold a face-to-face conversation.
Barron also advised checking the official state bar association website for the relevant state. Entering an attorney's name into these databases will show whether that person is actually a licensed lawyer.
The case underscores a growing risk facing immigrant families across the United States: as ICE detention cases put pressure on relatives desperate to secure a loved one's release, scammers are using increasingly convincing artificial intelligence tools to impersonate legal professionals and collect large sums of money for services that do not exist.
