London: Facebook has said the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violated its guidelines by creating fake profiles on its platform tied to the University of Farmington — a sham institution that left over 600 students, 90% of them Indians, in detention. The Facebook profiles were allegedly created by the ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division, the Guardian reported on Thursday.
“Law enforcement authorities, like everyone else, are required to use their real names on Facebook and we make this policy clear on our public-facing a Law Enforcement Guidelines’ page,” a Facebook representative told the daily. “Operating fake accounts is not allowed, and we will act on any violating accounts.” The University of Farmington had a website and FB and Twitter accounts — but did not have a campus or faculty. About 600 foreign students had enrolled with the fake university floated by the US authorities under a sting operation. Over 80% of these students were from the two Telugu states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
“In a network of suspicious FB accounts linked to the University of Farmington, the college’s alleged president, Ali ‘AJ’ Milani, liked the Michigan Jaguars sports club and had a 51-person friend list that was mostly people from South Asia,” the report claimed. “Carey Ferrante, who did not list any link to the school but had interactions with persons interested in it, posted three photos of herself that were actually stock photos and sent Facebook messages to at least one person,” it added.
Facebook has now removed the University of Farmington accounts.