WASHINGTON: Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Indians are sneaking into the United States across the Mexico border in what American authorities are saying is a sudden and unexpected spike in illegal immigration — from a country half way across the world which is said to be in the throes of an economic boom.
More than 1,600 Indians have been caught since the influx began in early 2010, while an undetermined number, perhaps thousands, are believed to have slipped through undetected, according to US border authorities cited in an account by the Center for Investigative Reporting and published by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.
The report said Indians are now the largest group of immigrants other than Latin Americans being caught at the Southwest border. The influx reportedly is showing signs of accelerating: About 650 Indians were arrested in southern Texas in the last three months of 2010 alone. The “mysterious and rapidly growing human-smuggling pipelineis backing up court dockets, filling detention centers and triggering investigations,” the report added.
The Indians are said to be flying into Latin American and Central American countries such as Equador, Venezuela and Guatemala via Dubai before arriving on the Mexico-US border, where they cross the Rio Grande River and hole up in US border towns, where they are usually helped by fellow Indians. Mexican organized crime groups are also suspected of being involved either in running the operations or in charging groups tolls to pass through their territory.
According to the report, most of the immigrants, surprisingly, claim to be from the Punjab or Gujarat, two of Indias (relatively) more prosperous states, but also ones associated with enterprise.
Many of them are “Sikhs who say they face religious persecution, or members of the Bharatiya Janata Party who say they are targeted for beatings by members of the National Congress Party,” the report said, while citing experts who maintained that political conditions in India offered no evidence of the kind of persecution that would prompt a mass exodus. The immigration, they said, is clearly driven by economic opportunities.
The spurt in Indian human traffic into the United States, borne out by the Tri-Valley University scam, would also belie the assumption in some quarters about an unprecedented Indian economic boom accompanied by a purported American decline.
The CIR/LA Times account said the trend has caught the attention of anti-terrorism officials “because of the pipeline’s efficiency in delivering to America’s doorstep large numbers of people from a troubled region.” Authorities interview the immigrants, most of whom arrive with no documents, to ensure that people from neighboring Pakistan or Middle Eastern countries are not slipping through.
But there is no evidence that terrorists are using the smuggling pipeline, it cited FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials as saying. Typically, the immigrants are released on their own recognizance or after posting bond.
US officials say the migration is the “most significant” human-smuggling trend being tracked by authorities. In 2009, the Border Patrol arrested only 99 Indians along the entire Southwest border. “It’s a dramatic increase. We do want to monitor these pipelines and shut them down because it is a vulnerability. They could either knowingly or unknowingly smuggle people into the U.S. that pose a national security threat,” Kumar Kibble, deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), was quoted as saying.
The CIR/LA Times report said in January, immigration court calendars at the area’s two main detention facilities were full of the common Indian surnames Patel and Singh, and attorneys and judges struggled to keep up. Some attorneys had failed to file the necessary forms; interpreters were not always available. One judge more immigration judges would soon be assigned to handle the increased workload.
The report said it is not clear how many Indians have been granted asylum or deported; immigration officials did not provide that information. But it said judges and attorneys appear to be toughening up, bond amounts have risen sharply in recent months, and attorneys say asylum claims are increasingly being rejected.
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN, Feb 7, 2011, 03.38am IST