A new $72,000 migrant smuggling route to the US starts with a charter flight, and many Indians are waiting to board

When a Legend Airlines Airbus A340 landed at San Salvador airport on July 15 after an 18-hour flight from the United Arab Emirates, its crew quickly realized something was wrong.

Salvadoran officials refused to connect the jet bridge to allow the roughly 300 passengers, all Indian nationals, to disembark, according to three former crew members on the flight who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Several passengers told the cabin crew they planned to travel onward to Mexico and cross the border there illegally into the U.S., one crew member said. Others said they were going on vacation to the Mexican border city of Tijuana, another crew member said.

Salvadoran officials were already on high alert when the flight landed. Several months earlier, U.S. and Salvadoran authorities had noticed an unusual pattern of charter aircraft landing in El Salvador carrying primarily Indian nationals.

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The planes were arriving full and leaving empty, a U.S. official said. And some passengers claiming to be tourists brought only a backpack for weeks-long trips. U.S. authorities later discovered that nearly all of the charter passengers disembarking in San Salvador had crossed the border into the U.S., the official said.

Such charter flights represent a new phase of illegal immigration to the U.S., five U.S. officials said in interviews with Reuters. Increasingly, they said, migrants from outside Latin America are paying smuggling networks hefty fees for travel packages that can include airline tickets – on charter and commercial airlines – to fly to Central America and then bus rides and hotel stays en route to the U.S.-Mexico border. “You have certain charter transportation companies charging extortion-level prices to prey on and profit from vulnerable migrants and facilitating irregular migration to the United States,” Eric Jacobstein, deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere, told Reuters. Jacobstein declined to comment on Legend or identify specific companies.

Liliana Bakayoko, a Paris-based attorney representing Legend since December, said the Romanian charter airline has not been accused of wrongdoing by any authorities. She added that she was unaware of the July flight and said the airline was basically like a “taxi driver.”

The record number of migrant arrests at the southwest U.S. border, which topped more than 2 million last fiscal year, has emerged as a major vulnerability for Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s presidential elections, with opinion polls showing more Americans trust Republican former President Donald Trump’s hardline approach to immigration.

On June 4, Biden – trailing in the polls in key battleground states – announced executive actions to deny access to asylum and quickly deport migrants or turn them back to Mexico if crossings surpass a certain threshold. It remains unclear how the policy will work in practice for migrants from faraway countries, which account for a growing share of illegal migration.

About 9% of irregular crossings at the U.S. border in the 2023 fiscal year involved migrants from outside Latin America, or about 188,000 people, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data. A decade ago, people from outside the Americas accounted for barely 1% of irregular arrivals.

The Biden administration attributes the historic levels of migration to global economic and political instability. Trump has blamed the high border crossings on Biden’s policies.

Indian nationals were the largest single group from outside the Americas encountered at the border last year, comprising about 42,000 arrivals. Migrants from 15 West African countries accounted for another 39,700, with most from Senegal and Mauritania.

The Biden administration has been working with some regional governments as well as travel companies to curb the flow of migrants.

In March, it began revoking U.S. visas for owners and executives of charter airlines and other companies thought to be facilitating smuggling. The State Department’s Jacobstein declined to name individuals or companies affected or how many had faced restrictions. Reuters was unable to independently establish which companies had been targeted.

In May, the administration warned commercial airlines to be on the lookout for passengers who might be intending to migrate illegally to the U.S. Apprehensions on the border in April fell 48% from December, U.S. government data show, which U.S. officials attribute in part to tougher enforcement by Mexico.

El Salvador’s Vice President Felix Ulloa said in an interview that his government has “permanent, constant, and effective” collaboration with the U.S. to fight irregular migration. The introduction of visa requirements and $1,000 transit fees on citizens of India and many African nations last October has “drastically reduced” the number of migrants transiting through San Salvador, he said.

But as some routes for illegal migration get squeezed, others open up.

CHARTER FLIGHTS AND TRAVEL PACKAGES

Reuters and Columbia Journalism Investigations, the university’s postgraduate reporting program, traced two new intercontinental migrant smuggling routes. The reporting for this story draws from previously unreported aviation data, border figures obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, and close to 100 interviews with government officials, police, airline employees, smugglers, travel agents and migrants in nine countries.

One route starts in West Africa, with migrants paying up to $10,000 for multi-stop commercial flights to Nicaragua, before continuing by land to the U.S.

The second, serving migrants from India, offers charter flights to Central America and overland transfers to the U.S. border for between 6 million ($72,000) and 8 million rupees ($96,000) per person – in many instances with full payment due after arrival in the U.S, according to Indian court documents and K.T. Kamariya, a deputy superintendent of police in the western Indian state of Gujarat investigating illegal migration.

The new routes via Central America avoid the visa requirements for migrants flying directly into Mexico. They also skip the dangerous northward trek across the jungle region between Colombia and Panama, known as the Darien Gap, that migrants face after arriving in some countries in South America with lax visa regimes.

Blas Nunez-Neto, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for Border and Immigration Policy, singled out Nicaragua as the new entry point for many migrants. President Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla and Cold War adversary of the United States, has been called out by Washington for authoritarianism following crackdowns on internal protests and opposition groups.

“Nicaragua has really, I think, unfortunately been weaponizing these flows,” Nunez-Neto said in an interview. “It’s difficult when you have a government in the region that has essentially thrown its doors open and allows anybody from anywhere in the world to fly directly in exchange for a cash payment.”

Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo, who manages communications for the government, did not respond to requests for comment.

‘TON OF QUESTIONS’

The abortive Legend Airlines flight to El Salvador – which has not been previously reported – originated in Fujairah in the UAE, with a stopover in Paris, according to aviation data from global tracking service Flightradar24 reviewed by Reuters.

As the Airbus remained parked at the gate in San Salvador, crew members popped open a cockpit window to ferry in food and water. But no cleaners were allowed on board and a passenger complaining of kidney stones was not given access to medical care, according to aviation data and the three crew members.

When the plane took off to return to the UAE about eight hours later, the pilot and attendants, who had joined the flight on a brief stopover in Paris some 19 hours earlier, were still on duty.

The passengers, including children, were on board for around two full days, the crew members said. Video footage shared with Reuters shows flight staff dropping trash bags from the open cabin door onto the tarmac before they prepared for take-off.

The Romanian Civil Aeronautical Authority said it was informed of the incident and about U.S. concerns that “some Indian passengers traveling to Central America on such charter flights had plans to irregularly migrate to the United States.”

But it said: “Romanian CAA has no legal responsibility as regards the immigration laws applicable in the United States of America.”

“There are a lot of Indian people traveling everywhere,” Legend’s lawyer Bakayoko said. “So actually, it was not suspicious at all.”

She would not disclose who hired Legend to fly the charters.

The turned-around flight was the third Legend flight to San Salvador recorded in aviation data over a two-week period starting June 29.

Passengers aboard the first flight in June had been allowed to deplane but Salvadoran airport officials were suspicious, according to one cabin crew member on board.

“They were asking us a ton of questions like, where were we from? Where is the company from? Where, when was the company founded?” the crew member said.

Legend registered in Romania in 2020, according to the Romanian government’s official database of companies. Legend’s owners – Ramin Youresh, a former executive of Afghanistan’s Kam Air, and Timor Shah Shahab – did not respond to requests for comment. Reuters was unable to find passengers who were on the flight.

Bakayoko would not comment on the company’s ownership structure.

After the July flight was turned back from El Salvador, aviation data show no more flights to Central America until December 9, when a Legend Airbus landed in Managua. The data show four additional Legend flights heading to Managua over the next two weeks.

By this point, the U.S. considered Nicaragua “a major hub of extra-continental irregular migration,” Jacobstein said.

Some 879,000 passengers landed at Managua’s airport last year, according to data from Nicaragua’s Central Bank, a 56% increase from 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic ground flights to a halt. Only 573,000 people flew out of the airport.

A senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official said that on some commercial airline routes into the region, more than 10% of seats were filled by people intending to migrate to the U.S. The official declined to name specific companies operating these flights.

Nicaragua’s finance ministry recorded income of 1.9 billion Nicaraguan cordobas ($52 million) from landing and transit visa fees last year, less than 2% of the government’s overall revenues, but more than five times the revenue from those same fees in 2019.

The Biden administration in May took steps to impose visa restrictions on 250 Nicaraguan officials and sanctions on government-affiliated companies over irregular migration and repressive policies. On the day sanctions were announced, Vice President Murillo did not address them directly, but denounced “traitors, cowards and sell outs who serve the Yankee imperialists” on local television.

MAMA AFRICA

Late on the evening of Aug 28, Ismaila Diop, 30, a small-business owner from Senegal, landed at Managua aboard Avianca flight TA315. On arrival, Diop said he paid $160 for a tourist visa and got a taxi from the airport to the Honduran border, five hours away. His Nicaraguan driver confirmed the trip and the $50 fare.

Diop flew from Dakar to Rabat to Madrid, where he boarded an Avianca flight to Managua with layovers in Bogota and San Salvador, ticket stubs and photos show.

Engaging in gay sex is criminalized in Senegal. Diop, who identifies as bisexual, said he fled after a severe beating left him unable to work for close to a month. His account was confirmed by medical records, photos and asylum documents reviewed by Reuters and CJI.

“In Senegal, there are some people who don’t believe in that,” he said, referring to same-sex relationships. “Either you go to prison or you get killed.”

Diop said a gay friend in the U.S. passed on the contact of a ticket broker in Morocco named Lisa Sow. Diop wired more than 2 million CFA francs ($3,200) to Sow, who told Reuters and CJI she used the money to buy Diop a plane ticket to Nicaragua.

In addition to Diop, Reuters and CJI spoke to 11 other migrants from West African countries who said they flew Avianca to Nicaragua before heading to the U.S. border.

Colombian airline Avianca has for several years been the top carrier into Managua, the flight data showed.

Asked about the migrants’ accounts and the data, Avianca said that it cannot discriminate against passengers who meet the requirements to travel. It added that it has taken measures against “irregular migratory traffic” such as limiting and canceling connections between Europe and different destinations, specifically Managua.

Avianca said in the emailed statement that it is also monitoring ticket sales, strengthening document verification procedures and delivering timely data to the authorities.

Along the way to the U.S. border, Diop – traveling in a group of about a dozen Senegalese migrants – was passed off to organized groups of smugglers who went by their first names only or called themselves “Mama Africa.”

Honduran law allows migrants to transit the country legally within five days if they register with officials on arrival, Allan Alvarenga, the director of Honduras’ National Migration Institute, which oversees the country’s immigration matters, told Reuters and CJI.

When they reached Guatemala, Diop and the other migrants met up with a smuggler who took them to a hotel, gave them a meal of fried chicken, rice and vegetables, and outfitted them with plastic yellow wristbands.

“The police, if they stop you, you show your bracelet,” Diop said of his journey through Guatemala, “They let you pass.”

Rolando Mazariegos, an official at Guatemala’s Migration Institute, which regulates migratory flows through the country, said illegal border crossers are returned to Honduras and that the government has prosecuted officials suspected of colluding with migrant smugglers. He said crackdowns by the U.S. and other countries were making smuggling more expensive.

“The more controls that are put in place by security forces or immigration authorities, the more the traffickers charge,” Mazariegos said.

In Sonoyta, Mexico, a town across the border from U.S. national parkland in Arizona, a Mexican smuggler who also called himself “Mama Africa” showed Diop where to cross through gaps in the border fence. Diop said the man told him to wait for U.S. agents so he could request asylum.

The guided trip cost Diop an additional $1,400, he said, adding that he paid with savings.

A Nicaraguan migrant smuggler said they started working with African migrants in November 2022. This smuggler said many migrants typically pay up to $7,000 for air travel and as much as an additional $3,000 to make it to the U.S. border.

The smuggler, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were connected to migrants by agents in Senegal. “It’s all by reference.” Over the last few months, their network has organized about eight trips a week of some 20 people each – now mostly Mauritanians, the smuggler said.

The smuggler said the number of migrants arriving in Nicaragua had dropped since late last year, an account two additional migrant traffickers backed up in interviews.

Since his arrival in New York last year, Diop has been staying in migrant shelters and is now in a tented migrant facility on the city’s Randall’s Island.

‘UNLUCKY EACH TIME’

On December 21, French authorities detained a charter aircraft on a stopover at the small Paris-Vatry airport after receiving an anonymous tip, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.

The plane, en route to Managua from Fujairah, was operated by Legend Airlines, the same operator that got turned back from San Salvador in July.

Of the 303 Indian nationals on board, 276 went back to India, according to Indian police records.

Tiphaine Watier, a public defender based at Vatry airport, said some passengers were so desperate to get to Nicaragua they went on a hunger strike in the airport: “There were people who had sold everything, their house, their car.”

Bakayoko said that Legend was not charged with any offense by French authorities. The Paris prosecutor’s office said an investigation into migrant smuggling is ongoing and no one has been charged.

After the Paris incident, Legend “implemented extremely strict new policies, paying attention to avoid any kind of potential illegal migration,” Bakayoko said. The company has refused “dozens” of potentially suspicious flights, she added.

Flight data show no Legend routes to Central America after December.

Among the passengers sent back to India was Gurpreet Singh, 22, the unemployed son of a farmer from Naurangabad, Punjab. He said he was charged 6 million rupees ($72,000) for the trip.

The deportation from France marked his third of five failed attempts to immigrate illegally to the U.S.

“So many of my friends went through these routes and they all found jobs, but I just got unlucky each time,” Gurpreet said in a phone interview. “I took a loan to pay the agent and I did not have a job waiting for me in the U.S., but I know that once you land there then many options open up.”

Gurpreet paid the agent, Sultan Singh, a 1 million rupee ($12,000) deposit, with the 5 million rupee ($60,000) balance due on arrival in the U.S., according to a Delhi airport police press release. Gurpreet did not comment on the cost of the trips.

Sultan, 32, owner of M/S Global Visa Solution, a travel agent in Amritsar, Punjab, has been charged with forgery, according to Usha Rangnani, deputy commissioner of Delhi’s airport police.

Sultan, interviewed at his home, said he is innocent of the forgery charge and had nothing to do with illegal immigration.

Gurpreet’s first attempt to migrate was in September 2023 via a flight to Vietnam, but he returned voluntarily, Rangnani said. In November, he was deported from Qatar after authorities discovered a fake Brazilian visa.

Days after the Legend flight, he was deported from Dubai when authorities discovered the French deportation stamp. In his fifth failed attempt, Gurpreet was deported from Almaty on March 8, after Kazakh authorities found torn pages in his passport.

Indian authorities charged him with forgery and he is out on bail, said his attorney, Abhay Kumar Mishra.

Gurpreet’s father, Kartar Singh, wants to set him up with a farm supply shop in the village.

“I have had many sleepless nights wondering which part of the world he is stuck in,” his mother Dalbir Kaur said. “He said he will make enough money in one year in America that someone earns in six or seven years in India, so I kept agreeing to his exit plans. But now I think he must stay put and find some work here.”