PHILADELPHIA — A 42-year-old Brookhaven man who worked for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration service has been charged with soliciting bribes from immigrants and making false promises about what steps he would — or even could — take to help them with their immigration cases.

Amara Dukuly, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Liberia, most recently accepted $6,000 in cash from a confidential informant posing as a Tajikistani immigrant, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in Philadelphia’s federal court Thursday.

During an April meeting in a Walmart parking lot in Eddystone, the complaint said, the informant — who was secretly being audio and videotaped — gave Dukuly the money, and Dukuly said he would use it to pay his connections in the government and help make the man’s record “clean.”

Dukuly told the man that doing so could help improve his chances of having his immigration paperwork approved, the complaint said. It quoted Dukuly saying: “Me, fight hard. Fix inside. Clean. With these people, clean.”

Dukuly then took no action to address the man’s case, the complaint said.

He was arrested Thursday and charged with one count of bribery of a public official, court records show. He did not have an attorney listed in the records.

The complaint said the April episode was not the first time Dukuly had solicited money from immigrants.

Prosecutors said the Department of Homeland Security had been investigating similar allegations against him since about 2017. And they listed six other instances in their complaint in which they said Dukuly requested cash from immigrants — none of whom are named — in exchange for promises of help with their cases.

Dukuly “did not have the authority to do any of the things he promised,” the complaint said. Instead, it said, he used the money for himself.

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