DETROIT (AP) – A former government worker has pleaded guilty for her role in a scheme to illegally obtain documents that allowed immigrants to remain in the United States, a prosecutor said Thursday.

Janice Halstead, a former employee of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, was accused of illegally distributing forms to people who sought help from an immigration consulting business in Dearborn. The forms gave so-called advance parole status to people otherwise not legally admissible to the United States. The status allows legal aliens to leave and then re-enter the country.

About 130 people from Yemen and Lebanon are believed to have benefited from Halstead’s efforts.

Halstead pleaded guilty to conspiracy to smuggle aliens into the United States and accepting money in exchange for issuing documents for entry into the United States, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Collins said.

The violations allegedly were committed from 1998 through 2002 when Halstead, formerly of Detroit, worked as an information officer for the INS, now the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Collins did not say when Halstead would be sentenced or what her sentence could be.

AP-ES-07-17-03 2027EDT