A Brookhaven man who once worked for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services pleaded guilty Monday to soliciting a bribe from a purported immigrant while making false promises about what could be done to help the man remain in the country.
Amara Dukuly — who was arrested by federal authorities last year — said little as he pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of receiving a bribe as a public official.
Prosecutors said in court documents that Dukuly, 42, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Liberia, had for years been accused by immigrants of approaching them and requesting cash in exchange for promises of providing assistance with their immigration cases.
In reality, prosecutors said, Dukuly had no power to take any action in peoples’ cases, and he often did nothing after receiving his payments, which he instead kept for himself.
The Department of Homeland Security had been investigating Dukuly’s alleged misconduct since 2017, prosecutors said, and in 2025, he was secretly recorded accepting $6,000 from a confidential informant posing as a Tajikistani immigrant seeking admission to the United States.
The charges against Dukuly relate solely to that incident, prosecutors said, during which Dukuly said he could help the man have a terrorist designation removed from his record.
“They’re going to make it clean then you’re going to go through the regular process,” Dukuly said, according to court documents.
Dukuly is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge John Milton Younge in July.