CHANDIGARH: In a bid to zero in on travel agents involved in selling the ‘American dream’ to Indian residents and sending them to US through ‘dunki’ routes, ED on Tuesday sent summons to 11 illegal immigrants deported from the US recently.
It has also initiated a probe under PMLA to trace the proceeds of crime.
Well-placed sources told TOI that ED asked the 11 to appear at its office in Jalandhar on different dates, and “at least one” of the 11 was from Haryana, while the rest were from Punjab.
According to preliminary data gathered by state officials after interviewing Punjab deportees at Amritsar airport, more than Rs 44 crore was paid to travel agents, with each person shelling out Rs 40 lakh-Rs 50 lakh on an average to reach the US illegally.
A total of 131 deportees belonging to Punjab arrived in four batches after the Trump administration started mass deportation of “illegal aliens” soon after taking over on Jan 20.
The sources said ED began the investigations by arranging details of the deportees “on its own”.
Of the 15 cases it initially analysed, it managed to get the “details and addresses of 11 deportees”.
Punjab Police have registered around two dozen FIRs on the complaints of the deportees, and ED has not yet officially sought any details from them, the sources said. The debriefing of deportees and the police complaints lodged by them point to a well-oiled network of agents who operate the ‘dunki route’ in a chain that involves touts and agents in several countries. This network makes the prospective illegal immigrants traverse through air routes, forests and rivers to reach Mexico, and then cross over to the US.
The deportation flights to India started last month, with the first batch of 104 illegal immigrants, of which 31 were from Punjab, landing in Amritsar on Feb 5 on a US military plane. The second flight, which landed on the night of Feb 15, had 116 illegal immigrants, including 65 from Punjab. On the third flight that landed on Feb 16, 31 of the 112 deportees were from the state. The last batch of 12 deportees arrived on Feb 23 on a commercial Turkish Airlines flight originating from Panama. The flight landed in Delhi, and four from Punjab were part of this group.