The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), working in conjunction with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), this week concluded Operation Twin Shield, a high-profile enforcement surge that has unearthed hundreds of elaborate immigration fraud schemes in Minneapolis–St. Paul, with one of the most striking cases involving a Kenyan man who admitted to fabricating a death certificate for just $100 in order to dissolve a marriage that in fact remained intact, leaving behind a living spouse in Minnesota who is raising five of his children.
“One alien admitted to fabricating a death certificate from Kenya for $100 to falsely claim the termination of a marriage, the spouse in question is alive, residing in Minneapolis, and is the mother of five of his children,” USCIS said.
The operation, which ran between September 19 and 28, is described by officials as the first deployment of this scale by USCIS in a single metropolitan region, targeting 1,000 flagged immigration benefit applications through over 900 site visits and interviews, resulting in findings of fraud, ineligibility, or national security and public safety risks in 275 cases, representing nearly half of those reviewed.
The Kenyan case, which involved the presentation of a falsified death certificate to mask an ongoing marriage, has stood out because of its audacity and the ease with which such a document was obtained, serving as an example of the complex tactics that enforcement officers say they are now determined to dismantle.
Other discoveries ranged from sham marriages designed to secure green cards, to exploitation of elderly U.S. citizens through coerced unions, to brazen admissions of fraud made just hours after denials under oath, with one case involving a man identified as the son of a suspected terrorist who had overstayed his visa and already accumulated a history of rejected applications on fraud grounds.
“In another case, a petitioner admitted to officers with Operation Twin Shield that she committed marriage fraud; this was only a few hours after swearing that her marriage was bona fide during an interview at our Minneapolis office,” as USCIS explained.
Joseph B. Edlow, the USCIS Director, described the initiative as a landmark moment for the agency, stating that immigration officers, under the direction of President Donald Trump, have been instructed to pursue fraudulent cases with unprecedented vigor.
“USCIS is declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud. We will relentlessly pursue everyone involved in undermining the integrity of our immigration system and laws. With help from ICE and the FBI, USCIS’ Operation Twin Shield was a tremendous success — hundreds of bad actors will be held accountable,” Edlow said, adding that fraud “harms those who follow the law and poses risks to national security and public safety.”
The initial outcomes show that 42 cases have already been escalated to court proceedings or referrals to ICE, with four arrests executed on-site, and USCIS has indicated that this number is expected to increase as pending investigations move toward completion and more administrative findings are formalized.
For Kenyans following developments in Minneapolis, the case has taken on a dimension that goes beyond the immediate fraud uncovered by U.S. immigration officers.
The issue, as community leaders and commentators have pointed out, is that many of the people implicated in such schemes are not Kenyan-born citizens but Somalis who, over time, have secured Kenyan identity papers either through irregular registration, forged documentation, or lax enforcement of vetting procedures.
Once armed with these documents, they are able to travel and present themselves abroad as Kenyans, and when they are later exposed for engaging in sham marriages, forged certificates, or other fraudulent activities, it is Kenya’s name that appears in the paperwork and in the headlines.
This pattern has caused unease within the Kenyan diaspora because it means that ordinary Kenyans, most of whom live and work abroad within the law, risk being tainted by the actions of people who never had any deep-rooted connection to Kenya in the first place.
The fear is that the reputation of Kenyans overseas is being undermined by those who are “passing through” Kenya, taking advantage of its citizenship documents to gain access to foreign systems, only to engage in fraud that inevitably bounces back on Kenya’s image.
The Minneapolis case involving a fabricated Kenyan death certificate is a vivid illustration.
It demonstrates how easily and casually a Kenyan document can be procured and then deployed in a U.S. immigration case, underscoring the international consequences of weaknesses in the issuance of identity papers at home.
Kenyan analysts now argue that the state must take a hard look at the registration of aliens, the issuance of passports and national identity cards, and the way citizenship is granted or sold, since these loopholes are what open the door for Kenya’s name to be misused abroad.
