There's an excellent story in the Washington Post about a marriage fraud ring that's been broken up by the authorities, with the result that some people are going to be sent home.

Some questions:

• Why is there a Ghanaian colony in Virginia?
• Why did this investigation take four years?
• And why did the judge hearing Caroline Chepkwony's plea feel the need to affirm that America is a "Nation of immigrants" from the bench?"America is composed of — is a nation of immigrants," he said. "Everyone here came from somewhere else.

Hunch Unravels Immigrant Wedding Scam

Odd Behavior at Arlington Courthouse Leads to Arrests in Probe of Green-Card Marriages

By Jerry Markon Washington Post Monday, November 13, 2006; A01

They didn't hug. They didn't kiss. They didn't even sit together.

Many couples going to the Arlington County Courthouse seemed more like strangers than people applying for marriage licenses. A man named Sam often escorted them to the sixth-floor clerk's office. Sometimes, there would be a furtive exchange of money in the elevator.

Before long, some of the same people would be back, filing for divorce, their court papers littered with mistakes — always the same mistakes.

"They misspelled 'circuit,' " said David A. Bell, the longtime Circuit Court clerk. "It was obvious something was going on."

Bell tipped off police, triggering a nearly four-year investigation that recently broke up one of the Washington region's biggest and most brazen immigration scams: an estimated 1,000 fake marriages. The scheme was centered in the area's little-noticed but rapidly growing community of immigrants from Ghana.

Read the whole thing.