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“Those detained are mostly from Gujarat and Punjab,” said a police officer from Gujarat.
In January 2022, as many as 5,459 Indians were caught entering the US illegally. Of these, 708 were caught along the US-Canada border. The numbers rose 35.9% to 7,421 in January 2023, including 2,478 detentions made on the US-Canada border.
01:16
How Turkey quake halted illegal journeys from Gujarat to US
Indians were detained in 2,663 attempted border crossings either from Canada in the north or Mexico in the south, the data says. Indians make up merely 2% of people detained for trying to enter the US illegally, but hardly a few were deported, according to Indian agencies and Gujarat police.
Many get refuge on humanitarian grounds. The US has been the world’s most popular destination for asylum-seekers since 2017, according to UN figures. Even those who lose in court can stay for years while their cases wind through a backlogged system.
02:17
The high cost of human trafficking: Gujarati man dies, wife and son injured as plan to illegally enter the United States goes wrong
Others were less fortunate. Gujarat police have been cracking down on organised human traffickers operating in the state after a family of four from Dingucha village, 44km from Ahmedabad, froze to death on the Canada-US border after they were reportedly separated in a blizzard from a larger group of Indians that made it across to the US in -35 degrees Celsius in January last year.
The tragic news left the country shaken, but did not stop Indians from attempting to make it to the US illegally – some ending in tragedies that underscored the desperation.
A Gujarati man fell to his death when he and his wife scaled the “Trump Wall” at the US-Mexico border on December 14 along with their three-year-old son. American border agents rescued the woman and the child.
In March this year, 9,648 Indian asylum-seekers were caught by US border guards – 2,289 of them on the US-Canada border. The same month saw a family of four – Pravin Chaudhary (50), wife Daksha (45), and their daughter Vidhi (23) and son Mitkumar (20) – from Gujarat’s Mehsana drown when their boat capsized in the freezing waters of the St Lawrence river that flows along the border.
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