Criminals are using artificial intelligence to impersonate real immigration attorneys, convincing vulnerable migrants to pay thousands of dollars for services and legal benefits that do not exist.
Migrants living in the United States without legal status must now be wary not only of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) but also of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is being used to deceive them—cloning lawyers’ identities and voices—to trick them into believing their immigration status can be resolved.
Ultimately, migrants not only lose thousands of dollars, but many also end up being deported.
Ángel Leal Jr., an immigration attorney in Doral, Florida, explained that criminals cloned “my image, my name, and even my voice using artificial intelligence to deceive migrants seeking to regularize their status” in the US.
The scammers, he explained, took real videos of Leal, manipulated them with AI, and posted fake ads and profiles pretending to be him.
“They hook you with the fake video. You watch the video, ask for more information, get directed to a WhatsApp number, and communicate with the person through that number.”
The criminals ask them to deposit money via banking systems like Zelle, Venmo, or similar platforms.
In the video, the fake version of the lawyer promises “US citizenship without an exam, an immediate work permit, and residency within a short timeframe,” Leal recounted.
“Promises that are impossible to keep,” he noted. But the migrants don’t know that. The criminals, he lamented, “take advantage of people’s desperation.”
Migrants, he said, “are very frightened, and that often prevents them from realizing what is happening. The criminals also used contracts bearing Leal’s law firm’s logo, forged signatures, websites nearly identical to the real one, and fake immigration hearings where the victim believed they were being granted residency or citizenship.”
“It’s all a lie; that is the extent to which they have gone,” Leal said. Hilda Guzmán, originally from Jalisco, who arrived in Chicago seeking asylum, fell victim to one of these scams.
In January, desperate to regularize her immigration status, she found a page on social media promising help for people in her situation.
At first, she was asked for $70—ostensibly to support a church and other migrants—but further charges followed, eventually totaling around $7,000 for work permit and Social Security processing fees.
She never met the alleged lawyer in person; when she asked for proof of identity, she received a photograph and a document that appeared to be legitimate.
She panicked when she finally discovered that the documents had been created using AI. She searched for the immigration number she had been given in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) database but found no record of it.
She contacted the organization the alleged lawyer claimed to represent, only to learn they had no knowledge of him.
Now, Guzmán is afraid. She does not know if her actions have jeopardized her actual legalization process in the United States.
“It doesn’t seem fair for people to mock and take advantage of you; I don’t know what will happen to me,” she told local media.
In 2025, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported over a million complaints regarding impersonation scams.
However, criminals have now found the perfect victims in undocumented migrants, because even if the scam is exposed, the fear of deportation prevents migrants from reporting it.
