An investigation into the human trafficking network operating from India has unearthed the involvement of thousands of local agents and at least 150 Canadian colleges that facilitate illegal entry into the US, Enforcement Directorate
sources said.

Some 4,000 to 4,500 trafficking agents are active in the country, 2,000 of them in Gujarat alone, an ED official told The Telegraph.

The revelation comes amid a drive by the Donald Trump administration to deport illegal Indian immigrants, with pictures showing them in handcuffs and shackles triggering allegations of ill-treatment.

“Investigations have revealed that nearly 2,000 agents or ‘partners’ in Gujarat, involved in smuggling Indians into the US via Canada, are still active and in touch with syndicate members in Canada,” the ED official said.

He said the central agency had identified some of the agents and was carrying out raids to arrest them.

The scam works this way, he said: the Indian agents get their clients admitted to Canadian colleges — many of them located close to the US border — on student visas. Once these migrants reach Canada, they illegally cross the US-Canada border.

“We have come across more than 12,000 (financial) transactions made to several colleges in Canada on behalf of ‘students’ from Gujarat between November 2021 and July 2024,” the ED official said.

“These payments to the Canadian colleges were made through three or four (Indian) financial service companies, which too are under our scanner.”

He added: “The ‘fee’ received by the Canada-based colleges was remitted back to the individuals’ account after (the racketeers had) pocketed a commission.”

This commission ranged between ₹55 lakh and ₹60 lakh per head, the official said.

The central agency has filed a money-laundering case in connection with the trafficking racket.

The official said that illegal immigrants found the “student-visa route” more hassle-free than the arduous “donkey route” — which refers not to a specific route but to a circuitous, often perilous, multi-country journey to the US.

The ED’s probe is linked to the death of four members of a family — including two children — from Dingucha village in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, who froze to death while trying to cross the US-Canada border in January 2022.

Jagdish Patel, 39, wife Vaishaliben, in her mid-30s, and their daughter Vihangi, 11, and son Dharmik, 3, were found dead near Emerson town in Canada’s Manitoba province.

The family, part of an 11-member group of undocumented migrants from India, is believed to have paid money to secure illegal entry into the US.

The ED had last December raided eight locations in Mumbai, Nagpur, Gandhinagar and Vadodara in connection with the human trafficking racket. The investigation revealed that three entities — based in Mumbai, Nagpur and Vadodara — had entered into a pact with some foreign universities for the admission of Indians against a commission, the ED official said.

More than 150 Canadian colleges were found to have entered into such an agreement with one of the Maharashtra-based entities, and 112 Canadian colleges with the other, he said.

Sources said that illegal immigration from India to the US via Canada had surged, with over 14,000 Indian migrants arrested at the border in the past year. According to US estimates, over 725,000 undocumented Indians live in America.

Trump has made the mass deportation of illegal immigrants a key policy, with the US said to have identified about 18,000 Indians it believes to have entered thecountry illegally.

During his US visit last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India would take back its citizens living illegally in the US. He also underscored the importance of dismantling the “ecosystem” of human trafficking.

Between 2009 and 2024, about 16,000 Indians were deported from the US, according to India’s externalaffairs ministry.