Why we fight for victims of immigration fraud.

The ProblemImmigration fraud is not merely a paperwork problem.

Say “immigration fraud” and most people picture a clerical matter — a marriage of convenience, a box checked wrong, a victimless shortcut to a green card. A minor administrative violation that harms no one.

It is nothing of the kind.

Modern immigration fraud is a deliberate, deeply personal crime committed against innocent U.S. citizens — and it upends their lives: their finances, their families, their freedom, their names. We call what happens to them Direct Harm to U.S. Citizens (DHC) — the worst kind of immigration fraud, and the kind the system is least willing to see.

DHC isn’t a single crime — it’s a family of schemes, each exploiting a different immigration benefit at a U.S. citizen’s expense. In one-sided marriage fraud, a foreign national deceives a U.S. citizen into marriage to evade the immigration laws, secretly harboring the intention of abandoning their spouse once their benefit is secured. In some cases, the foreign national then sues their spouse for immigration alimony under the Form I-864, which can theoretically last a lifetime, reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars. In VAWA fraud, a spouse fabricates abuse allegations to self-petition under the Violence Against Women Act — turning the citizen into the accused. The same playbook drives I-751 waiver fraud, and U visa and T visa fraud: a different benefit each time, the same U.S. citizen left falsely accused with few options for defense.

Worse, the system built to stop this looks away. Antifraud safeguards were dismantled and enforcement was deprioritized: ICE rarely investigates, DOJ rarely prosecutes, and USCIS lacks even a national antifraud strategy. Fraud spread in the shadows — and the Americans caught in its path were left without recourse, without advocates, and without a system that took their harm seriously.

The ImpactWhat it costs.

For the citizens who live it, DHC rarely begins with the word “fraud.” It begins with confusion, betrayal, and the sense that a life collapsed overnight. The damage compounds across five fronts:

• Mental Harm: Manipulation, gaslighting, sudden withdrawal, and calculated mistreatment inside intimate relationships.
• Financial Harm: Drained savings, coerced support, litigation costs, and the long shadow of the I-864.
• Legal Harm: False allegations that spark restraining orders, criminal investigations, and family-court disadvantages.
• Reputational Harm: Lies becoming paperwork, paperwork becoming process, and process becoming public record.
• Social Harm: Familial isolation while a foreign national methodically constructs an immigration narrative that casts the citizen as the aggressor.

These citizens come from every walk of American life — teachers, physicians, engineers, veterans, media personalities, intelligence professionals, and high-net-worth individuals. Their backgrounds and beliefs span the entire spectrum.

But their experiences share a common thread: they were targeted, deceived, exploited, or falsely accused by foreign nationals pursuing immigration benefits.

When these citizens reached out for help, they found doors closed. Local police dismissed them. Family-law attorneys lacked the immigration knowledge necessary to understand the fraud. Traditional immigration lawyers represented foreign nationals. And federal agencies, long insisting that fraud was “rare,” ignored unmistakable patterns of deception. These citizens were not just victimized; they were silenced.

The ScaleA national epidemic.

Immigration fraud is far broader than the public realizes. Marriage-based schemes remain the single largest category, but U.S. citizens are targeted across the full range of immigration benefits — driven by powerful incentives like expedited residency and decisive leverage in state proceedings.

And the agency charged with stopping it doesn’t. USCIS’s own internal data — pried loose only by a public-records request — reports a marriage-fraud denial rate that rounds to zero percent across every major marriage-based form. Not because the fraud isn’t there. Because no one is looking.

Congress has given the executive branch sweeping authority to prevent, detect, and respond to immigration fraud. Yet that authority is rarely used. The tools exist — what is missing is the will.

In 2025, these realities reached the national stage when Managing Attorney Cody M. Brown testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement. His extensive written testimony delivered a historic, data-driven indictment of systemic failures inside DHS and DOJ, exposing how federal practices allowed fraud to flourish.

Congress has now heard the case. Until the agencies answer it, the work falls to whoever is willing to fight it — one citizen at a time.

Our MissionWhy we exist.

Codias Law was built for this — and only this. Where the system saw paperwork, we saw a crime; where it saw no victim, we saw a citizen with no one in their corner. We exist to put someone there.

That conviction is not a slogan. It runs on three distinct levels — a principle we enforce, a power we check, and a person we defend.

The Philosophical Foundation: Enforcing the Social Contract

The Founding Fathers built the republic on a Lockean premise: government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, for one purpose — to protect their God-given rights to life, liberty, and property. Our highest mission is to hold the government to that bargain: prioritizing the rights of its own citizens over the desires of foreign nationals.

The Systemic Mission: Checking the Administrative State

Today, that social contract is being broken by an out-of-control federal administrative state. Agencies like USCIS have become dangerously disconnected from this fundamental purpose. When the federal bureaucracy rubber-stamps fraudulent applications, turns a blind eye to obvious exploitation, and tells American victims they “should have known better,” the state elevates the conditional privileges of foreign nationals above the lawful rights of U.S. citizens. We exist to fight this systemic failure, force transparency, and hold the administrative state accountable.

The Individual Mission: Defending the Victimized Citizen

At the individual level, the fight is hand to hand: one citizen, one case, one firm that refuses to look away. Codias Law is the shield and advocate for the American who has nowhere else to turn.

If you are a U.S. citizen victimized by immigration fraud, you have likely been dismissed, disbelieved, or made to feel invisible. You deserve better. You deserve someone who understands what happened, knows the law, and is willing to confront the system on your behalf.

We have your back.