Mexican citizen’s fake crimes for visas led to real bullets and new lies | Opinion
Every year, the Kansas City Police Department gives hundreds of undocumented immigrants or short-term visitors who are victims of violent crime in the city a chance to stay in the United States. A U nonimmigrant status or “U Visa” can be the golden ticket. But in 2023 under the Biden administration’s chaotic immigration policy, one Mexican citizen living here got entangled in a plan to turn that golden ticket into real gold — in his case, thousands of dollars. The result was gunfire in the city on at least 11 occasions in 2023.
Donald Trump’s political appointees say they were the ones who brought the criminals to justice. That’s preposterous. The tale isn’t of Trumpy heroism, but rather it is among the sad leftovers of Democrats’ too-little, too-late plan to get tough on undocumented immigration, so voters wouldn’t kick them out of power.
I noticed this little story when Oscar Gutierrez pleaded guilty last month to the conspiracy where he was paid by undocumented immigrants to manufacture the crimes needed to get Kansas City police to sign off on their U Visa application, something the police have done hundreds of times a year, peaking at 386 applications in 2024. This year, they’ve already signed off on 56.
The mastermind of the plot was Jose Luis Morales Salgado who had already pled guilty to the crimes when Gutierrez admitted his role.
According to the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Salgado would tell undocumented immigrants to have their car “stall” at a certain spot in Kansas City, where gunmen would rob them and fire a pistol into their car twice. Gutierrez was one of the people recruited to act the part of a robber.
After the fake robbery, the actors would flee and the “victims” would call the police. A patrol car would come. Officers would examine the bullet holes, talk to the shaken victims and take a police report. That’s when many of victims would ask the department to sign off on a U Visa application.
A source told KCTV 5 that more than 100 individuals were involved in the scam as robbers, victims or in other roles.
The U Visa program, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1999 after being passed by a Republican Congress, gives out about 10,000 such visas a year. In recent years, Kansas City alone has accounted for 2% or 3% of the total in the program that the Justice Department inspector general during the Biden administration said is also rife with other kinds of fraud.
KCPD spokesman Sgt. Phil DiMartino declined to disclose where these fake robberies took place, but the U.S. attorney’s office says police got wise to the scam when the robberies kept occurring at the same location and ballistics analysis found the same gun was used. Police license plate readers and city cameras helped track down Gutierrez.
According to Justice Department documents, on+ the second day of the Trump administration, Jan. 22, 2025, “an undercover federal agent and a law enforcement source met with Salgado … and recorded their meeting. The undercover agent made arrangements to pay Salgado $4,000 for a robbery to be staged in order to fraudulently obtain a U-Visa. Salgado told the undercover agent he would “put on a grand show.” Once the plans were agreed upon, the undercover agent paid Salgado $500 with a promise to pay the balance later. The undercover agent met with Salgado again on Thursday, Jan. 30, and Salgado was arrested.”
A press release from the U.S. attorney’s office read: “This case is part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime.”
That’s highly unlikely since no political appointees were in place at the Department of Justice then to tell federal agents to do any of this. Indeed, Operation Take Back America wasn’t launched until March 6 last year, after the criminals in question here were arrested.
What really happened is that during the waning days of the Biden administration, when the aging president finally started to get tough on undocumented immigrants, Democratic political appointees approved nonpartisan staff plans to pursue the case. There was no taking back of America involved.
This case, it just so happens, wasn’t done when Donald Trump sauntered into The White House.
David Mastio is a columnist for The Kansas City Star and McClatchy.
