(St. Louis, USA) - The former head of the city public defender's office is charged with arranging a sham marriage between a female subordinate and his Peruvian boyfriend to keep the boyfriend in the U.S., federal prosecutors said Friday. Eric Affholter, 40, and live-in boyfriend Pedro Cerna-Rojas, 31, "recruited" Affholter's employee, Assistant Public Defender Collette Lewis, to marry Cerna-Rojas in a Las Vegas wedding chapel, a marriage fraud indictment against both men says. Federal immigration law, which lets immigrant spouses remain in the U.S., makes no accommodation for same-sex marriages or civil unions, even in states that permit them. As part of an anti-terrorism initiative, prosecutors and immigration officials have recently started scrutinizing marriage licenses more closely to look for marriage fraud.
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