The passengers were to receive transit, student or tourist visas for the countries along the way.
The “Donkey” flight turned back from France to Mumbai airport has taken the lid off a mega illegal immigration racket that has been in operation for years, fuelled by a high demand from dreamers for such a costly and risky route to enter the United States via Central American nations like Nicaragua.
Donkey route, according to American think-tank, Migration Policy Institute, refers to an illegal route that migrants from India often use to enter the country of their choice. The Punjabi word dunki, meaning to move, or hop from one place to another, has inspired the term “donkey route”. The term denotes illegal border crossings via indirect routes with many stops in different countries.
While a bulk of the 276 returnees were Gujaratis (21), Punjabis and Tamil-speaking, the incident calls for counter measures to prevent these wannabe NRIs from risking their lives and families’ life savings—with each traveller paying up to Rs 25-30 lakh in instalments spread over two-three years.
“The current incident may at best cause a temporary freeze in such illegal immigration flights but the craze among young Indians for a ‘better life’ in the US is soon going to see the racket bounce back to its peak,” said a retired IPS official, who was involved in cracking several such rackets.
He added this flight might have also succeeded in transporting the dreamers but it seems there might have been dispute within agents or some disgruntled agent spilled the beans and sabotaged the plan.
As reports emerging from Paris suggest, the 26 passengers who had opted to seek asylum and refused to take the return flight to Mumbai have been denied asylum and would be “deported”.
The initial probe into the incident has thrown up the names of agents like Gujarat-based Kiran Patel and Hyderabad-based Shashi Kiran Reddy, the chief organizer of chartered flights from Dubai to Nicaragua, and another half a dozen agents in Gujarat, who have now gone underground. Investigators suggested that Reddy has been in the business for over 15 years and was allegedly involved in last January’s incident in which a Gujarati family of four from Dingucha village in Gandhinagar died while attempting to enter the US illegally.
The illegal immigration to the US over the last three years has seen a 206% increase. In 2021, 30,662 illegal immigrants from India tried to enter the US, in 2022, the number was 63,927, while in 2023 the figure was 96,917, according to a US Customs and Border Patrol report.
So well-oiled is the international racket that on paper the entire operation looks like a genuine tourist visit. In the present case, a syndicate of over 15 private companies was working to help the dreamers acquire identity documents, job letters, fake education certificates and English language test scores. The passengers were to receive transit, student or tourist visas for the countries along the way. The payment to agents were also supposed to be paid in instalment after reaching Nicaragua, Mexico and the final destination which could have been the US or Canada.
In an interview to a news channel, Liliana Bakayoko, the lawyer for Romania-based Legend Airlines whose plane was grounded at Vatry airport in France, said, “My colleagues who defended the passengers before the French judge told the media that the passengers they defended all had return tickets. They had hotel reservations and return tickets…”
The airlines said the client who chartered the flight from Dubai to Nicaragua was responsible for checking the passengers’ passports, tickets and visas. She said the client was a foreign company, a non-European one, but refused to disclose the identity.
After the plane landed in France’s Vatry for refuelling last week, the quick action and coordination between New Delhi and Paris saw the impasse end within five days.
Soon after their return to Mumbai, the 276 passengers, out of the 303 aboard the Romanian plane, were quizzed by immigration and CISF officials. 25 travellers, including two minors, on the Romanian plane, grounded in France, had sought political asylum in France but their plea has been rejected.