South Florida woman pleads guilty to posing as DHS official to get immigration cases dropped, DOJ says

A South Florida woman has pleaded guilty to impersonating a federal immigration official and using that false identity to file fraudulent motions seeking the dismissal of removal cases in immigration court, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

Ana Caridad Linares, 45, of Coral Gables, admitted to representing herself in court documents as "Ana Linares, Legal Administrative Specialist, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement," according to court records. She faces a maximum sentence of three years in federal prison.

She accepted payment from clients for preparing and submitting the fraudulent filings, prosecutors said.

An immigration judge first flagged one of her motions as fraudulent in February 2024. The motion falsely appeared to have been submitted by a United States Department of Homeland Security employee and sought dismissal of a removal case involving a noncitizen.

Linares caused at least three additional motions containing the same false title, language and representations to be submitted to the immigration court, court records show. In each instance, the filings were made to look like authentic DHS submissions.

By falsely claiming to act on behalf of DHS, Linares sought to invoke prosecutorial discretion authority reserved for department attorneys and employees, prosecutors said. Through the fraudulent filings, she attempted to secure the dismissal of immigration proceedings involving noncitizens who otherwise remained subject to removal.

"Ana Caridad Linares pretended to be a DHS official in formal court filings to obtain the unlawful dismissal of removal proceedings," U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said. "Her conduct was a fraud on the Immigration Court and an affront to the rule of law."

He went on to say it was "a brazen effort to corrupt lawful removal proceedings."