Secret US immigration loophole EXPOSED: It was created to fight crime, but the victims' visa is bulging to 400,000 cases and migrants stage FAKE robberies to get one

To onlookers, they look just like regular robberies — thugs pulling knives or guns on victims in gas stations, restaurants or parking lots, punching them and making off with a purse or a wallet.

In reality, the stick up is fake, and the attacker is being paid by their 'victim,' most often an illegal immigrant who is staging the underhand ruse to secure a permanent home in the US.

A certificate from the cops describing them as a victim of crime is all they need to apply for a U-visa, which for irregular migrants is a ticket to work permits and green cards.

Experts told DailyMail.com that while the scheme was created with good intentions, it's rife with abuse and is now a backdoor for tens of thousands of unlawful migrants to stay in the country.

This fiscal year, America is on track to see some 61,760 U-visa requests, a post-Covid high.

The real problem, however, is the ballooning backlog of cases under review.

That will approach 400,000 this year — people who can get work permits and avoid deportation as they wait for years, and perhaps even as long as a decade, for their case to be assessed.

Jessica Vaughan, an expert at the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-leaning think tank, said U-visas merit attention in an election year in which immigration has become a top issue.

'We need a president who's willing to clamp down on this program, who is not willing to facilitate fraud and abuse of our immigration programs,' Vaughan told DailyMail.com.

Created by Congress in 2000, the U-visa program was tucked into wider legislation to fight human trafficking and violence against women.

Lawmakers designed it to encourage those in the US illegally to report crimes — without fear of deportation — and encourage victims to come forward and cooperate with police, and get more crooks behind bars.

Through the program, petitioners, often women and children who have endured abuse or trafficking, are able to get a visa, and then a green card, before eventually seeking citizenship.

The scheme is aimed at victims who've 'suffered substantial mental or physical abuse,' says the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

But it has mushroomed in size.

Barely 11,000 people applied for U-visas in FY2009.

This year, more than five times as many people will submit petitions, our projection shows.

Applications fell slightly during the administration of former president Donald Trump, thanks to the Republican's anti-immigrant deportation push and Covid-19.

They picked up under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, who in 2021 allowed applicants to get work permits even before their applications are assessed.

Between January and March, nearly 14,500 people applied for U-visas.

At the end of March, the wait list had ballooned to nearly 367,000 applicants.

'That's a very large immigration program that's being run on the basis of these really tenuous claims,' said Vaughan.

Vaughan says the system is rife with abuse and as many as half of claims are bogus.

The most egregious scams get noticed by cops.

Officers in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, in April charged Ana Lizbeth Valenzuela Cruz, 39, of paying Denisse Rivas Mardones, 28, to pretend to rob her.

The pair went shopping together to buy a knife and clothes to stage the attack, which involved Rivas Mardones hitting and injuring Valenzuela Cruz, to make the attack look real.

But police did not buy it, and spent some 200 hours investigating the pair, eventually uncovering the plan to get U-visa paperwork.

They charged the pair, and a getaway driver, with falsely reporting an emergency. The department's Capt. Edward Hartwick called it a 'frustrating' waste of police time.

Law enforcers last month busted a bigger U-visa ring that encompassed fake robberies across Illinois, Louisiana, and Tennessee.

The bogus stick ups were staged in restaurants, coffee shops, liquor stores and gas stations between 2022 and 2023, it is claimed.

Bhikhabhai Patel, Nilesh Patel, Ravinaben Patel and Rajnikumar Patel allegedly posed as the victims, while Parth Nayi and Kewon Young carried out the attacks.

Federal prosecutors charged the six with conspiracy to commit visa fraud.

According to Vaughan, these cases are just the tip of the iceberg.

Cops don't typically investigate whether robberies were genuine and sign off on U-visa paperwork without thinking about it, she says.

And bogus robberies only make up a fraction of the fraud that pervades the system, she adds.

Some applicants bend the rules by requesting U-visas for crimes such as theft, that shouldn't qualify — but nevertheless get approved by lenient immigration officers, says Vaughan.

Other times, certificates are doctored. Applicants can fake the signatures of officers, or tick checkboxes for crimes such as 'rape' or 'domestic violence' that they did not experience.

Shari Rendall, an expert with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, another think tank, says some police officer 'feel compelled and face pressure to sign a certification, despite having reservations.'

When they don't, a scamming migrant can simply 'shop around' for a cop who will sign their papers, Rendall adds.

In a recent sign of how U-visas are being doled out liberally, a handful of the 49 migrants who were flown to Martha's Vineyard by Florida Gov Ron DeSantis in September 2022 have been put on the path to U-visas.

The migrants had worked with a Texas sheriff who was investigating the Florida officials who duped the migrants into boarding two chartered planes in San Antonio with false promises of jobs and money.

For some, the migrants' experience on the genteel Massachusetts island would not amount to 'mental or physical abuse.'

For Vaughan, the rising use of U-visas this past decade is 'symptomatic of a general problem with our visa programs.'

'It was created with the best of intentions to help people, to help law enforcement agencies go after bad people,' she says.

'But over time, because of a lack of effort to maintain the integrity of the program, it's become another opportunity to game our immigration system.'