Jennifer Gonzalez knew exactly why her business worked in Massachusetts, and she told a customer.
Massachusetts was "so special," she said in a conversation secretly recorded by a cooperating witness, because it's a sanctuary state. "You get health insurance," she said. "Um, you get a lot of help as an immigrant here."
Federal prosecutors say Gonzalez spent more than a decade selling American marriages to illegal immigrants who wanted green cards.
The 43-year-old Fall River woman was arrested on October 21 along with five alleged accomplices: Amara Pugh, Erica Daniels, Jessica Tavares, Cherice Alejandro, and Jaylin Hill. They're charged with marriage fraud, conspiracy to commit marriage fraud, harboring illegal aliens, and conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens.
According to prosecutors, the scheme worked like an assembly line. An illegal immigrant paid Gonzalez $38,000 to $40,000. She matched them with an American spouse, usually one of the people on her payroll. Daniels, for one, allegedly agreed to take $500 a month for as long as her marriage lasted. The couple stayed married for years, long enough for the immigration paperwork to go through. Then they divorced, and sometimes within a month the American spouse was married to the next customer.
Gonzalez allegedly married one of the customers herself. Pugh, prosecutors say, worked as her "secretary."
Gonzalez arranged 18 to 20 of these marriages a year. Prosecutors put her profit at more than $6 million.
She didn't keep the money here. "She bragged that she invested her ill-gotten proceeds in businesses and property in the Dominican Republic, which she repeatedly referred to as 'my country,'" said U.S. Attorney Leah Foley. "Miss Gonzalez got rich off selling the American dream, all the while investing her money in another country."
Prosecutors say American taxpayers were also buying her groceries the whole time. From 2019 through this year, Gonzalez allegedly collected more than $124,000 in SNAP benefits without reporting her marriage-brokering income or who was living in her household. Some of her co-defendants allegedly lied on their own food stamp applications, claiming they'd never been married.
Gonzalez was proud of her work. On the recordings, she called it a "very successful career" and said she was "very good at this." When the subject of a spouse falling in love came up, she cut it off. "We're not here for love."
Even the change in Washington didn't stop her. She acknowledged on tape that there was "a new government," and kept taking clients anyway.
She also had a point about Massachusetts. Since a 2017 ruling by the state's highest court, police and court officers in Massachusetts can't hold anyone solely on an ICE detainer. Boston and several other cities have their own sanctuary ordinances on top of that. Gonzalez told her customers the state's policies were part of what they were buying, along with the fake marriage.
Harboring and conspiracy to harbor each carry up to 10 years in federal prison. Marriage fraud and conspiracy each carry up to five. Hill is already in state prison on a gun charge.
None of the illegal immigrants who paid Gonzalez have been charged. Prosecutors say they're still investigating hundreds of reported sham marriages.