Immigrant-Smuggling Ring Broken, U.S. Says

Justice Department officials said Friday that they have smashed an immigrant-smuggling and money-laundering network responsible for transporting thousands of illegal immigrant workers from India across four continents and several countries to U.S. employers.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service said its agents shut down three separate operations that had sent as many as 300 Indian nationals per month to several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles.

Citing pending investigations and legal actions, officials were reluctant to disclose many details of the smuggling operation or how it was broken. They repeatedly declined to describe the nature and scope of the U.S. employers who employed the immigrants and did not elaborate on how many of the smuggled immigrants had found their way to Los Angeles or any other U.S. city.

However, they estimated that the international operation brought about 12,000 illegal workers into the country and generated gross profits for the smugglers of nearly $220 million in the last three years.

“This is the largest alien smuggling organization ever dismantled in United States history,” Atty. Gen. Janet Reno told a news conference. Smugglers’ “ability to profit from those who dreamed of a better life in America has been substantially impaired.”

INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said the case demonstrates federal resolve to prevent the growing threat of organized immigration cartels. “Many immigrants entering the country illegally are no longer doing so on their own,” she said. “Instead they are being smuggled in by well-organized, well-financed international criminal networks. Cracking a multimillion-dollar alien smuggling ring whose operations spanned four continents is an impressive achievement that underscores INS’ commitment to aggressive anti-smuggling efforts.”

31 Indicted, 21 Arrested

Reno and INS officials said they have indicted 31 people connected with the smuggling ring, 21 of whom have been arrested. They include Mukesh Solanki, who was taken into custody in Los Angeles on Nov. 16.

Through undercover operations in the major transit countries and several U.S. cities, officials said that they had identified assets of the operation, including safe houses and bank accounts that allegedly were used to launder the organization’s profits.

An ongoing investigation is focusing on U.S. firms that used the smugglers as an employment agency for illegal and low-cost labor. Justice officials said they have leads on more than 1,000 U.S. employers that may have hired the smuggled workers.

Nearly all of those smuggled were adult men from the Gujarat state in western India, but some were from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria. A few were women and none were children.

Officials said they were holding about 50 illegal workers who are cooperating with federal officials. Once they locate workers who were smuggled into the country, INS officials will decide whether they will be allowed to stay.

Mike McMahon, an INS agent who helped supervise the investigation, said the immigrants learned of the smuggling operation through word of mouth and volunteered to pay between $20,000 and $28,000 to travel to the U.S.

Typically, the route was from India to Moscow and then to Cuba. Once in the Western Hemisphere, the immigrants traveled to the Bahamas, Ecuador or Guatemala before finally crossing by land, sea or air into the United States. Once in this country, the immigrants were held in “stash houses,” where a family member or employer was required to pay for their release. If an employer paid the fee, the immigrant had to work off the debt. California was not a major destination of the smuggled immigrants, officials said.

Trip ‘Fraught With Danger’

With the multiple staging points, the passage from India to the United States was “a hard, grueling trip fraught with danger” that could often last for months or years, said U.S. Atty. Paul E. Coggins, who coordinated the Justice Department’s yearlong investigation from his office in Dallas.

Twelve Indian workers awaiting a flight to the United States were apprehended on Saturday in the Bahamas. At the news conference, INS officials showed reporters a videotape of INS officials and Bahamian police making arrests. The video also displayed hundreds of airline tickets and confiscated Indian passports.

Federal officials issued three indictments charging Nitin Shettie of the Bahamas and Ecuador, Navtej Pall Singh Sandhu of London and Niranjan Maan Singh of India as the leaders of three separate operations that made up the smuggling network. They were cited for bringing illegal workers into the United States, transporting them within the country and conspiracy. Shettie was arrested a week ago in the Bahamas and Sandhu was arrested Wednesday in San Juan. Singh has not been arrested and is being sought by federal officials.

Reno cautioned Singh and other suspects that U.S. officials would continue all efforts to arrest and prosecute them. “Let all those who flout the nation’s immigration laws be warned: We plan to take swift and decisive action against you,” she said.

Reno and INS officials praised foreign law enforcement officials for their cooperation in helping break the immigrant smuggling ring. However, they were unclear about the role Cuban and Russian law enforcement officials played.

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Smuggling Routes

In a program called “Operation Seek and Keep,” law enforcement officials said they have dismantled an international smuggling ring that, over a three-year period, funneled about 12,000 illegal immigrants from India into the United States and took in nearly $220 million. Immigrants were charged as much as $28,000 each for transport to the U.S., where most ended up working off the debt as low-paid laborers for employers in Los Angeles and other cities.

Source: Immigration and Naturalization Service