‘Mostly Economic Migrants With Fake Claims’
The number of Indians arrested for illegally entering the US nearly tripled to around 9,000 so far in 2018, making them one of the largest groups of illegal people apprehended, US Customs and Border Protection said on Friday.
Paying smuggling rings between $25,000-$50,000 per person, a growing number of Indians are illegally crossing the US-Mexico border and claiming asylum for persecution, CBP spokesman Salvador Zamora said. Many present viable claims, but a large number are economic migrants with fraudulent petitions that swamp the system and can cause legitimate cases to be “washed out” in the high volume of fraud, he said.
Around 4,000 Indians who entered the US illegally this year did so over a threemile stretch of border fence at Mexicali, Zamora said. “The word got out that Mexicali is a safe border city which favors their crossing into the US,” he said, adding the CBP expects the data for the fiscal year ending September 30 would show “around 9,000” Indian nationals had been apprehended versus 3,162 in 2017. However, Indians still have some way to go to outnumber the roughly 30,000 El Salvadorans who entered the US illegally in 2018. Asylum seekers range from lower caste “untouchable” Indians facing death threats for marrying outside class to Sikhs claiming political persecution, immigration lawyers said.
Fraudulent asylum seekers often present ‘cut and paste’ evidence identical to other migrants, Zamora said. Some 42.2% of Indian cases were denied between fiscal years 2012 to 2017, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The Indian embassy in Washington and Indian consulate in San Francisco did not respond.
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