Feds charge 3 current or former Louisiana police chiefs in an alleged
visa fraud scheme
[July 17, 2025]
By SARA CLINE and JIM MUSTIAN
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Federal authorities have charged three
small-town Louisiana police chiefs with taking hundreds of $5,000 bribes
over nearly a decade in exchange for filing false police reports that
would allow noncitizens to apply for visas that let certain crime
victims stay in the U.S.
The false police reports would indicate that the immigrant was a victim
of a crime that would qualify them to apply for a so-called U visa, U.S.
Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook said Wednesday at a news conference in
Lafayette. He said the police officials were paid $5,000 for each name
they provided falsified reports for, and that there were hundreds of
names over the years.
There had been “an unusual concentration of armed robberies of people
who were not from Louisiana," Van Hook said, noting that two other
people were also charged in the alleged scheme.
“In fact, the armed robberies never took place,” he said.
Fraud, bribery and conspiracy charges
Earlier this month, a federal grand jury in Shreveport returned a 62
count indictment charging the five defendants with crimes including
conspiracy to commit visa fraud, visa fraud, bribery, mail fraud and
money laundering, Van Hook said.
Those charged are Oakdale Police Chief Chad Doyle, Forest Hill Police
Chief Glynn Dixon, former Glenmora Police Chief Tebo Onishea, Michael
“Freck” Slaney, a marshal in Oakdale, and Chandrakant “Lala” Patel, an
Oakdale businessman.
If convicted, the defendants could face years or even decades of jail
time. Court and jail records don't list attorneys for any of them.
According to investigators, people seeking special visas would reach out
to Patel, who would contact the lawmen and offer them a payment in
exchange for falsified police reports that identified the migrants as
victims of armed robberies that never occurred.
The scheme went on for nearly a decade, Van Hook said. When pressed
about the extent of the fraud, Van Hook said there “hundreds of names”
—- specifically for visas that were approved.
Asked what might happen to the people who allegedly paid bribes,
including whether they might be charged or their immigration status
might be changed, Van Hook said he couldn't say yet but that the
investigation is ongoing.
U visas offer a rare pathway to citizenship
Getting a U visa can give some crime victims and their families a
pathway to U.S. citizenship. About 10,000 people got them in the
12-month period that ended Sept. 30, 2022, which was the most recent
period for which the Homeland Security Department has published data.
These special visas, which were created by Congress in 2000, are
specifically for victims of certain crimes “who have suffered mental or
physical abuse” and are “helpful to law enforcement or government
officials in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity,”
based on a description of the program published by the U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services.
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Acting U.S. Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook speaks during a press
conference announcing the indictment of current and former police
officers on fraud and conspiracy charges, Wednesday, July 16, 2025,
at the Lafayette Federal Courthouse in Lafayette, La. (Brad
Bowie/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)
“These visas are designed to help law enforcement and prosecutors
prosecute crimes where you need the victim or the witness there, ” Van
Hook said. “U visas serve a valuable purpose, and this is a case where
they were abused.”
In 2021, USCIS warned that the U visa program was susceptible to fraud
after an audit from the Office of Inspector General found that
administrators hadn’t addressed deficiencies in their process.
The audit found that USCIS approved a handful of suspicious law
enforcement signatures that were not cross-referenced with a database of
authorized signatures, according to the OIG report. They were also not
closely tracking fraud case outcomes, the total number of U visas
granted per year, and were not effectively managing the backlog, which
led to crime victims waiting for nearly 10 years before receiving a U
visa.
Current and former police chiefs are arrested
The current or former police chiefs are from small central Louisiana
municipalities that are near each other. They're in a part of the state
that is home to multiple immigration detention facilities. Although
Louisiana doesn't share a border with a foreign country, there are nine
ICE detention facilities in the state — holding nearly 7,000 people.
Local news outlets reported seeing ICE and FBI agents entering the homes
of two of the chiefs. Van Hook said authorities searched multiple police
departments and a Subway sandwich shop that Patel operated.
Two of the police chiefs were arrested Tuesday at a hotel in Baton
Rouge, where the annual Louisiana Association of Chiefs of Police
conference was being held. Details surrounding the other arrests were
not immediately available.
Van Hook and others said at Wednesday's news conference that the arrests
don't mean the indicted chiefs' departments are corrupt.
“It saddens me to have any fellow law enforcement officers caught up in
crimes,” said Rapides Parish Sheriff Mark Wood, whose office assisted in
the investigation. “It puts a bad light on the good cops that do their
job right and hold the line as they should.”
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