On December 21, a Legend Airlines flight took off from Dubai with 303 Indian passengers. Hours later, the flight, bound for the Central American country of Nicaragua, landed at Vatry airport in France, 100 miles (160 km) from Paris, and came to a halt for technical reasons. But the flight was not allowed to take off again. French authorities had received information that the passengers may have been trafficked. They took action, turning the airport into a makeshift tribunal and calling judges and lawyers for emergency hearings. The possibly tired and nervous passengers were summoned before a judge.
“The French authorities received a tip-off and took it very seriously. All 303 passengers were Indian citizens and had boarded the flight in the United Arab Emirates,” said the airline’s lawyer Liliana Bakayoko. She did not explain whether the tip came from a third country or an authority with friendly ties to France.
Bakayoko said French authorities immediately launched an investigation. “At the moment we can say that the aircraft was chartered by a non-European customer (of Legend Airlines) who had also sold tickets to the Indian citizens on board,” she said. She refused to give the customer's name.
During their interrogation, French officials discovered that many of the passengers had booked hotel rooms in Nicaragua. Some of them had tickets to return to the UAE. They found this information interesting because Nicaragua, which borders Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south, is known as a popular gateway to North America, where thousands travel each year in hopes of advancing both socially and economically.
However, on December 27, French authorities closed their human trafficking investigation. This was because the arrested passengers had told them that they had boarded the plane “voluntarily,” Bakayoko said. The case, which had dogged France and India for five days, took a crucial turn as the disclosure suggested that the passengers had likely paid significant amounts of money to board the plane bound for Managua, Nicaragua.
The flight was grounded for four days. Since neither Nicaragua nor the United Arab Emirates were willing to accept the plane, Indian authorities asked passengers with Indian passports to return home. The flight landed in Mumbai on December 26, but with only 276 passengers. 25 of the passengers had instead applied for asylum in France. They were moved to a special zone for asylum seekers at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. “Two passengers were arrested because they were carrying several passports and a significant sum of money,” Bakayoko said.
The plane grounded by police at Vatry airport took off four days after landing in France. | Photo credit: AP
Donkey flights
The episode has drawn renewed attention to the staggering number of Indians immigrating illegally to the US and Canada on “donkey routes”. This refers to a method in which migrants travel through various countries with lenient visa requirements to ultimately reach their dream destinations, particularly the US, UK and Canada. Sometimes migrants even resort to dangerous routes to cross a border, such as crossing dense forests inhabited by wild animals and criminal gangs, or traveling in subzero temperatures or crossing rivers and other bodies of water in rickety boats and treacherous conditions .
Once popular in Punjab, “donkey routes” that inspired the recent Hindi film “Dunki” are now popular among Gujaratis too. Of the 303 passengers traveling from Dubai to France, 95 were reportedly from various districts in north Gujarat. Gujarat police have identified 21 of them but refused to reveal their identities. According to police, Gujarat and Punjab are the countries with the highest number of illegal Indian immigrants in the US and Canada. Gujarat police have formed special teams to crack down on the agents who operate from villages or smaller towns and promise desperate people an “easy” escape on donkey routes to the US.
A police official said that the man behind this particular charter flight is Shashi Kiran Reddy, a Hyderabad-based agent who runs a vast network of sub-agents in Gujarat and Punjab as well as the Gulf region to facilitate illegal immigration to the US.” We get more details about the agents who facilitated the travel of these passengers,” he said.
A passenger on the Nicaragua-bound flight that was grounded in France on suspicion of human trafficking evades the media as he leaves the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport after arriving in Mumbai. | Photo credit: Portal
In Gujarat's Mehsana district, a hotbed of illegal immigration, Ramesh Patel said two of his relatives were on that flight. “I can’t reveal their names, but they had been preparing for this trip for a year,” he said. “My two relatives had traveled to Dubai two weeks ago. From there they took this special flight.”
According to several sources, hundreds of people have migrated illegally in six villages of Gandhinagar, Mehsana and Sabarkantha districts of Gujarat in the last two or three years. “It only becomes news when a flight is grounded or when people die while trying to enter the U.S. from Canada or Mexico. Otherwise, this practice will continue unabated. Hundreds of people made it to these places safely,” said Parbat Chaudhary, a resident of Visnagar, a town in Mehsana district.
Nehaben Patel, a resident of Sabarkantha, said this was a common practice and was done with the knowledge of the local authorities. “One of the factors fueling this increase is opportunities abroad. People don’t find opportunities here. In villages, smaller towns and even cities there are no well-paying jobs and sometimes none at all. If they move to a big city like Ahmedabad, it is expensive. They would rather spend money to get to the US illegally and get more out of their lives there.”
A community leader from Mehsana alleged that most government recruitment exams in the last 15 years were rigged or marred by allegations of corruption and irregularities. “There is a feeling that only those who pay money or have good connections get government jobs,” he said. “There are no well-paying private jobs. So it is better to have a simple job in Canada or the US and earn well than to stay here in India and struggle forever.”
Tragic journeys
In the last two years, at least nine Indians have died while trying to enter the US from Canada or Mexico. In January 2022, a family of four came from Dingucha village in Gandhinagar district – Jagdish Patel, 39; his wife Vaishaliben Patel, 37; and their daughters Vihangi, 11, and Dharmik, 3, – set off from Dingucha with a Canada visitor visa in their passport. About a week later, the family reached Emerson, a small town on the U.S.-Canada border. They decided to make the arduous journey to the USA on foot. It was midwinter. Temperatures in the region sometimes fall below -30°C. The next day their bodies were discovered in the snow. They froze to death just a few meters from the US border. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the incident a “stunning tragedy.”
In December 2022, Brijkumar Yadav from Mehsana district died while climbing the Mexico-US border wall, popularly called Trump Wall, with his wife and three-year-old son. His wife and son survived and now live in the United States
In April 2023, another family of four from Manekpura village in Mehsana died when the boat they were traveling in capsized in the St. Lawrence River on the US-Canada border. The victims were identified as Pravinbhai Chaudhari, 49; his wife Dakshaben, 45; her daughter Vidhi, 23; and son Meet, 20. Their bodies washed ashore on marshy land.
In April this year, Jignesh Barot and his wife Vandana boarded a flight to Colombo in Sri Lanka from Kalol near Gandhinagar. From there, the couple had planned to travel to Europe, then Mexico and finally the United States. Vignesh and Vandana and another couple had agreed to pay Rs 75-90 lakh to an agent, Kamlesh Barot, police said. Kamlesh accompanied the two couples to Colombo. From there they all flew to Jakarta, Indonesia, where they were asked to stay until their Canadian visas were approved. The couples were introduced to another agent, Rajesh Vira, and Kamlesh returned to India.
The two couples spent several weeks in Jakarta waiting for visas, which never came. They ran out of money. They finally returned to India in July with the help of relatives. Kamlesh, Vira and another agent Prakash Sindhi reportedly threatened the couples who had demanded the agents return their money. The two couples had paid the agents around ₹10 lakh each on the flight to Sri Lanka. On their return, the couples lodged a complaint against Kamlesh, who was arrested by the Gandhinagar police on charges of cheating and cheating.
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“Such complaints keep coming because people want to travel to the US through illegal routes, even if it means risking their lives,” said a police inspector from north Gujarat.
“No improvement in living standards here”
In Manekpura, few were willing to talk about why middle-class families would rather live illegally in the US or Canada than stay in India. “For some people here there is no future. There are fewer opportunities, incomes are stagnating and living standards are not improving. People take enormous risks to secure the future of their children. They believe it’s worth it if they get to their destination safely,” said a resident.
“Many families have relatives in the USA, Canada or Great Britain. Whenever their relatives come home, people here are impressed with their lifestyle and standard of living. These relatives now own properties in cities like Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. So people here think that they will be better off in a few years if they move out too. Here they can only do some farming or run a small business,” said a local politician from Gandhinagar, who admits that many people are seeking his help or support to move out.
Some young people were so desperate to move that they took unusual routes to get there through illegal channels, police said. Last September, for example, Mehsana police charged 45 people with carrying out an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) racket. They had found that four young men from Mehsana had scored high in the IELTS exam without appearing for it and were seeking admission in colleges in Canada. The four immigrants were caught by US border authorities while attempting to enter the country from Canada in April 2022. When they appeared in the Northern District Court of New York, they could not speak or understand a word of English.
As many as 96,917 Indians were arrested while entering the US illegally from November 2022 to September 2023, according to the latest US Customs and Border Protection data. Of these, 30,010 were caught at the Canadian border and 41,770 at the Mexican border. An annual breakdown of the numbers of people arrested or detained suggests that the number of people moving to these countries out of desperation is increasing. In 2019-2020, 19,883 Indians were arrested. As many as 30,662 Indians were arrested in 2020-21, while this number stood at 63,927 in 2021-22. Following the death of the Patel family and due to the frequency of such incidents, US and Canadian authorities have expressed concern to authorities in Gujarat about the extensive network of agents enabling this practice.
“Even as an illegal immigrant, life in the US seems much better. There is nothing for free here except your voice and the empty chatter of our leaders,” said a Mansa resident whose family members moved to the US about a decade ago and started a business.
Following the incidents in January and February this year, nine people remain missing after leaving Gujarat. The Ministry of External Affairs told the Gujarat High Court that India was unable to locate them. No one knows whether they achieved their goal, were caught and sent to prison, or died.
With contributions from Kallol Bhattacherjee in New Delhi