Cartels charge Indians $21,000 to help them cross US border illegally: Sheriff

An ArizonaSheriff told lawmakers in Washington that criminal transnational organisations called cartels on average charge $21,000 from Indians to help them illegally cross over the American border. Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County, Arizona told members of the House Judiciary Committee this week that the minimum amount being charged by a cartel for a foreign national to cross over the border is $7,000, a report by news agency PTI on Saturday (February 4) said.

Dannels informed the lawmakers that the border along Mexico is not secure and the cartels control south of the American border. “I think India was USD 21,000, for example. But the minimum is, like, around USD 7,000 right now. Most of these people don’t have it,” he told the committee.

The Arizona Sheriff added, "So, when they come across the country, though, they might go through a processing, as the honourable judges talked about, but they’re servant to the cartels at the end, which is usually for sex trade, gangs, drugs, labour, you name it, I have seen no win-win in this.”

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A few days back, a report by the Washington Post said that illegal border crossings fell sharply in January due to tighter restrictions applied by the Joe Biden administration against migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti along the southern border. The report said that illegal crossings by migrants from these four countries were down more than 95 per cent. It added that the number of migrants stopped along the Mexico border last month to about 150,000, down from 251,487 in December.

On Thursday, the government said that almost 1,000 children who were separated from their parents while attempting to enter the United States during Donald Trump's presidency were still not back with family. Releasing a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said a task force set up to coordinate reunification efforts "has to date identified 3,924 children" separated during Trump's tenure, of which 2,926 were reunited.

"Of the 998 children who remain to be reunited... 148 children are in the process of reunification and 183 families have been informed of the opportunity to reunify by a contracted NGO," the statement added.

(With inputs from agencies)

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