When the aircraft from Fujairah, Dubai, to Nicaragua, was stopped by immigration officers on December 26 at Vatry airport in France on suspicion of human trafficking, four US donkey flights had already departed for their intended destination, and two more were preparing to take off.
The Wire has reported that as Romania-based Legend Airlines, a chartered Airbus A340, was intercepted, officials in France and India were on a high alert.
Those on board were reportedly en route to Managua, Nicaragua, a Central American country, with the eventual destination being the US via the donkey route.
A Central American country between the Caribbean Sea and the North Pacific Ocean, Nicaragua is the primary stopover for the US donkey route for people from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
In the past, the US State Department pointed out Nicaragua’s lack of genuine efforts in addressing labour trafficking.
For the unversed, the Donkey route is an unlawful way of entering a foreign country via multiple stops in other countries.
For the first time, a donkey flight was used for illegal migration to the US.
The usual US donkey route crosses through Central American states, including Nicaragua, Havana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Colombia via the Panama Jungle or Arizona, and Peru, the portal elaborated. The illicit migrants either take a road donkey via Mexico or a boat journey to Havana. They also operate via the Panama jungle, where people travel barefoot.
The report adds that Punjab is notorious for sending people to the US via the donkey route, a trend that has picked up in the past 2-3 years following the pandemic. Even youngsters from Haryana are using the donkey routes in large numbers.
According to The Wire, the passengers included Punjabis, Gujaratis and a Nepali national. A two-year-old child was the youngest of the lot.
Twenty-seven out of 303 passengers opted for political asylum in France. The rest returned to Mumbai on December 27.
A man named Shashi Kiran Reddy from Hyderabad arranged the entire process, the portal added.
While 66 passengers on Legend Airlines who paid between Rs 60 and Rs 80 lakhs for the US donkey process have been questioned by the Gujarat Crime Investigation Department (CID), the Punjab Police has formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) consisting of four members. It is said that the Punjab Police is contacting the Foreigners Registration Office (FRRO) in Mumbai to obtain the passengers’ records and addresses.
Four youngsters, of the lot, revealed that they failed in their donkey route attempts in the past. They were going home to Gurdaspur district in Punjab. They said that four similar flights had already landed in Nicaragua while two more were about to leave when they were asked to return to India.
They evaded questions about how much the donkey agents charged. It has emerged that there was a substantial difference in the fees charged for the US donkey process in Punjab, Haryana, and Gujarat. On average, travel agents charged roughly Rs 45 lakh per head for the US donkey process in Punjab.
In Haryana, they would settle for anything between Rs 50 lakh to 70 lakh per person. In Gujarat, people paid approximately Rs 60 to Rs 80 lakh to reach the US illegally via the donkey route.
In Punjab, a cartel of Jalandhar- and Gurdaspur-based travel agents led the US donkey process. The youngsters stayed in hotels in Dubai before leaving for Nicaragua, The Wire report said.
Meanwhile, the Director of Bureau of Investigation L.K. Yadav told the portal that they have inputs about the Nicaragua human trafficking case for which the SIT was formed. “Our team is liaising to connect the missing links. We are appealing to the victims of this fiasco to approach the police and get their first information reports registered. Since the US needs cheap labour, people try illegal means to reach there,” he was quoted as saying.
A senior police official said the Punjab Police had asked the FRRO Mumbai for the details of all the passengers. “We have not questioned any of the victims or travel agents in this case, but we have got leads to track the case. We constantly ask the victims to come forward for justice. In case nobody approaches us, we’ll reach out to the victims,” the official told The Wire.
Satnam Singh Chahal, president of the US-based North American Punjabi Association, said that he has been opposing illegal migration and donkey route but in vain. “I have been writing to the Punjab government on this issue since 1997 when Parkash Singh Badal was the chief minister. I even shared the names and addresses of the travel agents with the Punjab government, but no action was taken. The fact is that neither the government is serious nor do people want to work here,” he told The Wire.
Citing data from the Migration Policy Institute, he said that approximately 11.2 million authorised immigrants were living in the US in 2021, a rise in number from 11 million in 2019. “It is an alarming situation. Almost every day, we notice hundreds of Punjabi youngsters standing on the border to cross over to the US,” he was quoted as saying.
Unsurprisingly, social media has added to the menace. Scores of followers, the report highlighted, not only share details of US donkey routes, but they also send offers to gullible youngsters.
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