The Mob Lawyer, Updated : One Manhattan attorney and the Chinese 'snakeheads'.

For Chinese nationals seeking asylum in the United States during the 1990s, Manhattan lawyer Robert E. Porges was the man to see. When 286 aliens aboard the Golden Venture shipwrecked off a Long Island beach in 1993, Porges wound up representing most of them. Thousands of others arriving here also made their way to Porges, who helped them file asylum applications in which they recounted harrowing stories of persecution for membership in underground churches, criticism of government officials, or resistance to mandatory abortions. The Harvard-trained Porges charged his clients up to $2,000 each for his help-he ran a law firm, not a charity- but it was a small price for the Chinese to pay considering the alternatives. He was a savior.

Or so it seemed. Now it turns out his true clients may not have been the asylum seekers at all. Instead, according to a federal indictment, Porges's paymasters were brutal crime syndicates. Last year, following a 30-month investigation, Porges, his wife, and five others in his law firm were accused of conspiring with smugglers to bring aliens into the United States and filing false asylum claims on their behalf. In August, prosecutors added six more defendants to the case and expanded the charges against Porges. Assuming the allegations are true-so far, Porges denies them-it will mean the law firm described as having the country's largest political-asylum practice will have thwarted U.S. immigration law for the better part of a decade in close coordination with Chinese mobsters.

The alleged fraud was massive, involving thousands of asylum applications. "About 80 percent of them were false," says a source knowledgeable about the case. Because the fraud consisted of so many claims, the amount of resources devoted to it would have been huge, from the simple manpower necessary to process all the forms to the complicated adjudications they required before resolution. Supporters of legal immigration like to argue that immigration isn't a zero-sum game-in other words, immigrants create jobs rather than steal them. When the question turns away from economics to law-enforcement agencies with limited budgets, however, immigration really is a zero-sum game. By snarling the immigration service to the extent that it did, the Porges firm consumed resources that might have been used to better effect in other ways-such as fighting terrorism.

Porges is hardly the first dirty immigration lawyer. In 1998, Sheldon Walker of New York was convicted of submitting thousands of false asylum claims. What makes the Porges case different-and sleazier-is the law firm's ties to vicious "snakeheads," the slang term for Chinese smugglers. Snakeheads demand up to $50,000 for their services, which involve taking immigrants on a circuitous route from China to the United States, often through several countries and over many months. By the time the immigrants set foot in America, they are usually expected to have made their payments in full. This presents a problem because the costs are so steep and the immigrants so poor. Those who are unable to secure loans from their families or Chinatown gangs aren't treated with kindness. Men sometimes enter into arrangements that can only be described as indentured servitude; women are frequently forced to work as prostitutes. Violence is routine.

Having a lawyer like Porges on the payroll is a tremendous asset to the smuggling operations. For starters, the Porges firm advised snakeheads on "routes of entry into the United States," according to the indictment. Immigrants who were caught nevertheless had plenty of options-and many even turned themselves in. This way, they could get in touch with Porges and file phony asylum claims. The law firm tracked down others by scanning INS detention lists for names supplied by the smugglers. From an office a few blocks west of Manhattan's Chinatown, Porges ran a nationwide operation. The indictment speaks of activity not only in New York, but also California, New Orleans, and Seattle. Porges, in fact, had raised eyebrows for years. "I first encountered him in 1994 at a federal court in Arlington, Virginia," says a former INS lawyer. "He had come down from New York to represent two penniless Chinese who were plainly fresh off the boat. Who was paying for this? The answer was obvious: The snakeheads."

Lying on asylum forms is a clear exploitation of American generosity. Each year, the United States gives permanent safe haven to tens of thousands of aliens it believes will face persecution if they're made to return home. It's hard enough to determine who's telling the truth when lawyers are not helping the people they represent concoct stories-yet this is precisely what Robert E. Porges did. Paralegals at his firm would invent tall tales for the asylum applicants and have the aliens copy them into their own handwriting (which enhanced their credibility), often tailoring their lies to appeal to particular immigration judges. The indictment identifies the many creative ways Porges would have his clients plead for mercy. One claimed he faced persecution for disclosing an "official's extramarital romantic liaison" and another because "the applicant's child had written an essay protesting the forcible sterilization of the applicant." Prosecutors say these were bald-faced fabrications.

There's no way to tell from the indictment how many Porges clients were allowed to stay in the United States on the basis of false claims, but it's clear that many were in fact granted asylum. Even if Porges's clients were no more successful than typical asylum claimants-whose applications are approved roughly one-third of the time-he would have assisted in securing asylum for thousands.

Though "assisted" may not be the best word to describe it. When Porges clients were released from INS custody-a standard practice for asylum seekers whose applications are under consideration-the firm would arrange for their transportation to New York or some other location selected by the smugglers. This way, the immigrants could come under the snakeheads' control once more. They were essentially kidnapped and held hostage until they had paid their entire smuggling fee. A legal aide who worked with Golden Venture passengers told Newsday that one of Porges's clients, right after being released from detention, was seen being forced into a car-and has not been heard from since.

Prosecutors say the Porges firm earned more than $13 million in fees from the smugglers, but the greed apparently didn't stop there. It also kept a cash payroll in order to avoid taxes and filed false statements with the IRS.

The trial was originally set to begin this fall, but it was delayed until March because the defendants asked for more time to study a growing list of indictments. Porges may think he can win, but the prosecutors appear to have a strong case comprised of documentary evidence seized from the firm and cooperating witnesses. The net is tightening in other ways, too. In a separate Virginia case that concluded in November, Mark Kuang pled guilty to smuggling charges and was sentenced to nine years in prison by a federal court. He was part of a syndicate that brought some 2,000 Chinese into the country illegally between 1991 and 2000, for at least $60 million. In his guilty statement, Kuang pointed his finger directly at "a law firm working for the syndicate"-i.e., the Porges firm.

Busting the Chinese smuggling rings won't be easy. The people being smuggled, after all, are paying customers-they want to be smuggled-and confessing their true stories to immigration officials raises the prospect of deportation. What's more, they put their own lives and the lives of their families at risk by turning into informants.

One tactic to combat alien-smuggling may be to rethink asylum policy, which developed during the Cold War. Traditionally nobody questioned what people had to do in order to get to the United States and request asylum. If a person forged a passport to slip through the Iron Curtain, for instance, the "crime" of forgery would not be held against him. But given the pervasiveness of alien-smuggling-and the sophisticated Porges-style fraud apparently behind it-reviewing this policy may make sense. Perhaps those who have allowed themselves to be smuggled into the United States by violent criminal organizations should face somewhat stricter scrutiny than they have in the past.

It may be one of the few effective ways of fighting a phenomenon that comes as close to the African slave trade as anything this country has seen since the 19th century. Refusing even to consider it would send a clear invitation to the snakeheads and their collaborators in the legal world to keep on taking advantage of us.