Nearly 3-fold rise in Indians caught sneaking into US

INDIANS PAY HUMAN TRAFFICKING RINGS BETWEEN $25,000 AND $50,000 PER PERSON TO GET ACROSS BORDER AND A NUMBER OF INDIANS ARE CROSSING FROM MEXICO BORDER

WASHINGTON: The number of Indians arrested for illegally entering the US has nearly tripled to about 9,000 this year, making them one of the largest groups of illegal aliens apprehended.

The Indians pay human trafficking rings between $25,000 and $50,000 per person to get across the border and a growing number of Indians are illegally crossing the frontier with Mexico border and claiming asylum for persecution, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said on Friday.

Many present viable claims but a large number are economic migrants with fraudulent petitions that swamp the system and can cause legitimate cases to be “washed out” in the high volume of fraud, CBP spokesman Salvador Zamora told Reuters.

Zamora said the CBP expects the data for the fiscal year ending on September 30 to show “around 9,000” Indian nationals had been apprehended, versus 3,162 in fiscal year 2017.

Asylum seekers range from lower caste Indians who say they are facing death threats for marrying outside their caste, to Sikhs claiming “political persecution”, immigration lawyers said.

Fraudulent asylum-seekers often present “cut and paste” evidence identical to that of other migrants, Zamora said.

The Indian embassy in Washington and the Indian consulate in San Francisco did not comment on the matter.

Around 4,000 Indians who illegally entered the US this year did so over a three-mile stretch of border fence at Mexicali, Zamora said. “The word got out that Mexicali is a safe border city which favours their crossing into the US,” he said.

Some 42.2% of Indian asylum cases were denied during fiscal years 2012-17, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. This compares with denial rates of 79% for El Salvadorans and 78% for Hondurans.

Indians still have some way to go to outnumber the roughly 30,000 El Salvadorans who illegally entered the US in 2018, the data showed.

After being held in US, Indians are often bonded out of detention by human trafficking rings, Zamora said. They then enter indentured servitude in businesses ranging from hotels to convenience stores to pay off smuggling debts and bond fees, he said.