Punjab-origin man gets 5-year jail in US for human smuggling
Thursday, 25/04/2019
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WASHINGTON: A 61-year-old Indian has been jailed in the US for five years for smuggling foreigners, including a majority of Indians, into America, the department of justice has said.
Yadvinder Singh Sandhu pleaded guilty early this year, saying he personally assisted around 400 people to unlawfully enter the US between 2013 and 2015. This human smuggling resulted in at least one death and endangered the lives of many, the department of justice said.
Sandhu used multiple names including Yadvinder Singh Bhamba, Bhupinder Kumar, Rajinder Singh, Robert Howard Scott and Atkins Lawson Howard. According to admissions in Sandhu’s plea agreement, since 2013, he played a major role in human smuggling conspiracy operating out of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, India and elsewhere. He also oversaw and directed co-conspirators operating out of the Caribbean.
Sandhu and other members of the conspiracy made flight arrangements for foreign nationals to travel from India through other countries including Thailand, UAE, Argentina, Iran, Panama, Venezuela, Belize and Haiti – to the Dominican Republic.
The Dominican Republic was used as a staging area, where foreigners were housed before being transported to the US by boat, where co-conspirators took them to stash houses until flights could be arranged to California, New York, or elsewhere.
Sandhu also arranged for fraudulent identifications for people to use in the US, prosecutors alleged. The boat trips organised by Sandhu and his co-conspirators to transport foreigners from the Dominican Republic to the US were perilous as old, damaged, cracked, unlicensed, overcrowded and unsafe boats were used to make the journey, they said.
In at least one instance, a foreign national died in a boat on his way to the US, the Department of Justice alleged. At times, the smugglers would take passports from the foreigners during their journeys, physically assault them and threaten their families to collect money.
Foreigners paid between US$ 30,000 and US$ 85,000 to be smuggled from India to the US. From at least 2013 to 2016, human smuggling was Sandhu’s primary source of income, the federal prosecutors alleged.
