Europe and Middle East airlines cash in on thriving human trafficking as Indians, Africans scramble for the US

Europe and Middle East airlines cash in on thriving human trafficking as Indians, Africans scramble for the US

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Colombian airline Avianca has for several years been the top carrier into Nicaraguan capital, Managua, the flight data showed.

Asked about the migrants’ accounts and the data, Avianca said that it cannot discriminate against passengers who meet the requirements to travel. It added that it has taken measures against “irregular migratory traffic” such as limiting and cancelling connections between Europe and different destinations, specifically Managua.

Avianca said in the emailed statement that it is also monitoring ticket sales, strengthening document verification procedures and delivering timely data to the authorities.

Along the way to the US border, Ismaila Diop, 30, a small-business owner from Senegal, landed at Managua aboard Avianca flight TA315.  Traveling in a group of about a dozen Senegalese migrants, Diop was passed off to organised groups of smugglers who went by their first names only or called themselves “Mama Africa.”

Honduran law allows migrants to transit the country legally within five days if they register with officials on arrival, Allan Alvarenga, the director of Honduras’ National Migration Institute, which oversees the country’s immigration matters, told Reuters and CJI.

When they reached Guatemala, Diop and the other migrants met up with a smuggler who took them to a hotel, gave them a meal of fried chicken, rice and vegetables, and outfitted them with plastic yellow wristbands.

“The police, if they stop you, you show your bracelet,” Diop said of his journey through Guatemala, “They let you pass.”

Rolando Mazariegos, an official at Guatemala’s Migration Institute, which regulates migratory flows through the country, said illegal border crossers are returned to Honduras and that the government has prosecuted officials suspected of colluding with migrant smugglers. He said crackdowns by the US and other countries were making smuggling more expensive.

“The more controls that are put in place by security forces or immigration authorities, the more the traffickers charge,” Mazariegos said.

In Sonoyta, Mexico, a town across the border from US national parkland in Arizona, a Mexican smuggler who also called himself “Mama Africa” showed Diop where to cross through gaps in the border fence. Diop said the man told him to wait for US agents so he could request asylum.

The guided trip cost Diop an additional $1,400, he said, adding that he paid with savings.

A Nicaraguan migrant smuggler said they started working with African migrants in November 2022. This smuggler said many migrants typically pay up to $7,000 for air travel and as much as an additional $3,000 to make it to the US border.

The smuggler, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were connected to migrants by agents in Senegal. “It’s all by reference.” Over the past few months, their network has organised about eight trips a week of some 20 people each – now mostly Mauritanians, the smuggler said.

The smuggler said the number of migrants arriving in Nicaragua had dropped since late last year, a figure two additional migrant traffickers backed up in interviews. Since his arrival in New York last year, Diop has been staying in migrant shelters and is now in a tented migrant facility on the city’s Randall’s Island.

After arriving in New York, Diop stayed in migrant shelters and is now in a tented migrant facility on the city’s Randall’s Island, where he shot this photo in May. On December 21, French authorities detained a charter aircraft on a stopover at the small Paris-Vatry airport after receiving an anonymous tip, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.

The plane, en route to Managua from Fujairah, was operated by Legend Airlines, the same operator that got turned back from San Salvador in July. Of the 303 Indian nationals on board, 276 went back to India, according to Indian police records.

Tiphaine Watier, a public defender based at Vatry airport, said some passengers were so desperate to get to Nicaragua they went on a hunger strike in the airport: “There were people who had sold everything, their house, their car.”

Liliana Bakayoko, a Paris-based attorney representing Legend airline, said that Legend was not charged with any offence by French authorities. The Paris prosecutor’s office said an investigation into migrant smuggling is ongoing and no one has been charged.

After the Paris incident, Legend “implemented extremely strict new policies, paying attention to avoid any kind of potential illegal migration,” Bakayoko said. The company has refused “dozens” of potentially suspicious flights, she added. Flight data show no Legend routes to Central America after December.

Among the passengers sent back to India was Gurpreet Singh, 22, the unemployed son of a farmer from Naurangabad, Punjab. He said he was charged 6 million rupees ($72,000) for the trip.

“So many of my friends went through these routes and they all found jobs,  but I just got unlucky each time,” Gurpreet said in a phone interview. “I took a loan to pay the agent and I did not have a job waiting for me in the US,  but I know that once you land there then many options open up.”

Gurpreet paid the agent, Sultan Singh, a 1 million rupee ($12,000) deposit, with the 5 million rupee ($60,000) balance due on arrival in the US, according to a Delhi airport police press release. Gurpreet did not comment on the cost of the trips.

Sultan, 32, owner of M/S Global Visa Solution, a travel agent in Amritsar, Punjab, has been charged with forgery, according to Usha Rangnani, deputy commissioner of Delhi’s airport police.

Sultan, interviewed at his home, said he is innocent of the forgery charge and had nothing to do with illegal immigration.

Gurpreet’s first attempt to migrate was in September 2023 via a flight to Vietnam, but he returned voluntarily, Rangnani said. In November, he was deported from Qatar after authorities discovered a fake Brazilian visa.

Days after the Legend flight, he was deported from Dubai when authorities discovered the French deportation stamp. In his fifth failed attempt,  Gurpreet was deported from Almaty on March 8, after Kazakh authorities found torn pages in his passport.

Indian authorities charged him with forgery and he is out on bail, said his attorney, Abhay Kumar Mishra.

Kartar Singh, is the father of Gurpreet, who tried and failed five times to migrate to the United States, pictured at the family home in Naurangabad, Punjab on April 5, 2024. REUTERS/Rupam Jain 

Gurpreet’s father, Kartar Singh, wants to set him up with a farm supply shop in the village.

“I have had many sleepless nights wondering which part of the world he is stuck in,” his mother Dalbir Kaur said. “He said he will make enough money in one year in America that someone earns in six or seven years in India, so I kept agreeing to his exit plans. But now I think he must stay put and find some work here.”

  • A Reuters report
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