It is an old story, with a fresh chapter being written into it every so often. This May, it was a German charter flight of 253 Indians that was sent back from Jamaican capital Kingston to Dubai on suspicion of human trafficking. A few of the passengers were scheduled to travel to Nicaragua and others to Canada after a supposed week-long stay in Jamaica, although only one day was accounted for. Officers of the Criminal Investigation Department (Crime) of Gujarat suspect that around 75 passengers from the state and a few from Punjab were attempting to migrate to the US illegally.
How does it feel to be sent back? It has been over seven months since Raman Thakor, 32, was deported from Vatry in France last year. Back now in Mehsana, a city in agrarian north Gujarat, there is not a single day when he does not think of going back. “This was his third failed attempt [at illegal immigration],” his wife Alpita, 30, tells us between sobs, even as her three-year-old daughter tries to wipe her tears while playing with a balloon. “Earlier, he had to return from Vietnam and Indonesia after agents duped him.” He is raring to go again, a thought that distresses Alpita no end, although Thakor’s parents are unperturbed. “They are confident that he will reach the US somehow and, once there, all our financial troubles will be over,” says Alpita. “But what about me and our children?”
Thakor was one of the 303 Indian passengers aboard a Nicaragua-bound Romanian charter plane that was grounded for four days at Vatry on suspicion of human trafficking. Although all passengers possessed valid travel documents, some of them confessed to wanting to unlawfully cross into the US via Mexico. Twenty-seven applied for asylum in France, while the remaining 276, including 96 from Gujarat and others from Punjab and Haryana, were repatriated. Later, upon their return to their native places in Mehsana, Gandhinagar and Patan in the north and Anand in central Gujarat, the CID (Crime) arrested 15 agents.
With incidents like these getting reported frequently statewide, investigators have been chasing visa agents, middlemen and facilitators (‘donkers’ in human trafficking circles) who operate within sophisticated cartels across multiple nations. Data from the United States Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) for September 2023 shows a fivefold surge in Indian illegal immigrants since 2019-20—96,917 people were apprehended between October 2022 and September 2023, compared to 19,883 in 2019-20.
But hard statistics cannot reflect the actual hardships these desperate men and women endure. Cinema, like the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Dunki (the Punjabi word for the act of moving from one location to another), a tale of friends from a Punjab village aiming to reach England released last November, offers only a slice of life. But it takes a tragedy like the one that befell Praveen Chaudhary and his family of four in March 2023 to stir humanity’s collective soul. The boat that the Chaudharys were in capsized on the St Lawrence River during their illegal attempt to enter the US from the Quebec-New York border in Canada. In January 2022, another family of four—including Jagdish Patel’s three-year-old child—from Dingucha village in Mehsana died in a blizzard while trying to cross into the US from Canada. Two persons, including Gujarati-origin Harshkumar Patel a.k.a. ‘Dirty Harry’, were indicted for their deaths by a US district court in March this year.
However, such accidents, arrests or indictments are no deterrent to the perilous aspirations of individuals from states such as Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana. Indeed, days after the Vatry incident, charter flights had been taking off almost every week from Dubai to destinations that allow visa-on-arrival for Indians, says Sanjay Kharat, superintendent of police, CID, who is heading the Vatry probe. “We understand the risks involved,” says Rannaben, whose two sons and husband have embarked on the donkey or ‘dunki’ route—a roundabout journey crafted to dodge border controls—multiple times in their lives. “Jagdishbhai’s family’s case was unfortunate, but for every such incident, thousands have successfully crossed over and become wealthy,” she adds.
TA pivotal motivation driving this mad rush is the transformation of family fortunes. No one exemplifies this better than Rannaben and her family. Her husband P.V. Patel reached the US in the mid-’90s with an alleged fake passport for Rs 35 lakh. He toiled for a decade at a 7-Eleven shop in New Jersey, followed by another seven years in the kitchens of various takeaway food joints. Rannaben and her sons moved out of their flat into a two-storey tenement within a gated community in Mehsana’s city centre within five years of Patel’s move to the US. Five years ago, as his return approached after he turned 60, the couple sent their elder son Rashesh to the US via the Canada border, at a cost of Rs 60 lakh. However, Rashesh did not have the same luck as his father; he spent 17 months in jail before being deported in 2022, with the family spending Rs 25 lakh on legal fees. In 2021, they managed to successfully send their younger son Ronak to Chicago via Africa and Mexico after three attempts spanning over four months. He is now “settled” in Chicago. Meanwhile, the family is preparing to send Rashesh back into the US again. “He will depart for Turkey next week,” Rannaben says breezily, as she shifts the conversation to the heart of the matter—how she is busy shortlisting brides for her sons “settled” abroad. As is Radhaben, in her sixties, mother of 21-year-old Punit Patel who returned from Vatry. “We will find another agent soon. We are in a hurry as he is nearing marriageable age.” Her elder son had ventured down the path of ‘bey number’ (illegal route) five years ago and has since attained legal status abroad. Radhaben hasn’t given up hope for her second-born.
For a young immigrant, the hallmark of an elevated lifestyle is securing a Patidar bride followed by lavish weddings and a well-appointed home. Dozens of villages in north Gujarat are dotted with modern two- or three-storey bungalows, run by distant relatives or hired assistance. The landscape includes concrete streets and amenities such as schools and hospitals, though these resources remain largely underutilised due to the mass exodus. These settlements only burst with activity during the four winter months when the NRIs visit. The Rs 1-1.5 lakh per month that each member remits through covert Angadia and Hawala networks fuels purchases of expensive bikes, cars and gold ornaments, along with indulgences like cricket betting.
The Price of the ‘Prize’
During the interrogation of around a dozen Vatry-returned passengers, the CID officers were astounded by a baffling revelation—the cost per person for a months-long one-way trip to enter the US via Canada or Mexico was Rs 70 lakh. Who funds these risky trips? “Local wealthy individuals invest in an aspirant with an expectation of getting a return on their investment in three years at a reasonable rate of interest,” says Babubhai Patel, a veteran US citizen with business interests in India and the US. “They work for 10-12 hours a day for less than the minimum hourly labour rates. They share accommodation or sleep on the shop floor, incurring minimum costs, paying off loans and sending money home.”
These well-oiled syndicates work on trust within the Gujarati communities, dominated by Patidars but not restricted to them. All payments are made to the agents through an opaque Hawala system. Many call it modern-day bonded labour, when, ironically, the labourers willingly offer to get trafficked and exploited by their employers. “Gujarati entrepreneurs facilitate cheap labour. A group of employers pay in advance to human traffickers for a flightload of labour,” says Rajkumar Pandian, additional director general, CID-Crime and Railways. Survivors and entrepreneurs in the US reveal that these immigrants are paid $10-12 (Rs 830 to Rs 1,000) per hour or less, and no overtime charges. They work odd hours, through weekends and keep to their place of work for fear of being apprehended. Employers keep their passports, making them open-air prisoners. Despite these ordeals, “there is an inexplicable craze in these villages for a life in the US, which is unfortunately only spreading,” says Kharat.
The life-threatening risks of being trafficked through countries and encounters through forests, drug cartels and wildlife, with the dangers of dodging law enforcers, have turned into a medal of sorts that these families back home recount to their children as modern-day parables of valour. No surprise then that they grow up romanticising these adventures and dream of becoming heroes by entering the US as illegal immigrants.
At the heart of this blind craze are several deep-rooted social evils that have plagued the villages of Gandhinagar, Mehsana and Anand districts for generations now. The most striking being the case of the missing daughters. The desire for a son has meant female foeticide. Gujarat has the third-lowest sex ratio at birth in the country with 909 girls per 1,000 boys, lower than the national average of 940. “Patel boys do not find brides in their community. Many marry tribal girls, which means a difficult cultural adjustment for the family as well as the girl, and such unions struggle. Patel girls are at a premium, who prefer boys settled in the US so that they can have a comfortable life, independent of in-laws,” says Rannaben.
By Hook Or By Crook
Pandian says there are mainly two ways illegal immigration takes place. First, visa agents connive with foreign educational institutions for fake admission offers and get a genuine visa for the intended destination. Second, they take the travellers to Dubai with a valid visa. For the onward journey, they are shown as part of a cultural troupe or tourists. Agents from Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat control this nexus through local contacts at every stopover.
“Earlier, they used to fly directly to Mexico and escape before immigration or during transit from the airport, but that was a serious security hazard that seems to have been fixed by the country,” says Pandian. “Now, they use multiple country stopovers, with the average cost ranging between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 80 lakh. The higher end of the package includes food packets and lawyer fees for asylum. The USCBP treats them as victims of human trafficking.” After a headline-hitting event, the agents slow down for a while, but restart soon enough. “We are focusing on cracking the local agent network, the first point of contact for the victims,” says Pandian. “We also need more data from other stakeholders like embassies, travel agents, the Intelligence Bureau, International Air Transport Association.”
Operations in plain sight are par for the course on the streets of Mehsana city and its surrounding villages. A 35-year-old agent spills the beans on several modes of transit. “Earlier, we used to fly directly to Mexico, but the administration there has become greedy. They track our travellers and smoke them out. Oiling their greedy machinery was financially untenable,” he says. “Now, we fly into Mexico from different countries to avoid the attention of their immigration officers. However, we know it is a matter of time before this track gets busted, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Of late, the long-winding legal ways to become a US green-card holder through investment or skilled work permits are losing popularity in India. Ahmedabad-based veteran visa consultant Lalit Advani, who specialises in EB5 (employment-based, fifth preference) visas that grant permanent resident status, attributes the massive rise in illegal immigration to one extremely significant change that is no longer illegal. “You get an EB5 green card after spending nearly a million dollars and a few years in the queue,” he says. “That you can actually walk across the border in the US and get a social security number and facilities that permanent residents get plus a work permit for a fraction of that amount negates the basis of visa processes for a legal work permit.”
Wisened by years of travel between India and the US, Babubhai claims that the governments of both countries are aware of the goings-on and exactly how to curb it, but want it to continue. “Why are you wasting your time on the issue? There are no victims here,” he says. Only an intricate combination of ambition and adversity.