A 60-year-old Indian man has pleaded guilty in New York for his role in a complex, transnational conspiracy to smuggle people to the US, that used the Dominican Republic as a transit point. Yadvinder Singh Bhamba pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and 15 counts of smuggling and will be sentenced in April 2019. This is the first time the people smuggling connection is mentioned. He allegedly had a role in a human smuggling conspiracy operating out of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico and India.
Yadvinder Bhamba personally assisted around 400 people in unlawfully entering the United States between 2013 and 2015. He also oversaw and directed co-conspirators operating out of the Caribbean. People paid between US$30,000 and US$85,000 to be smuggled from India to the United States and from at least 2013 to 2016.
Bhamba had been arrested in the Dominican Republic in August 2017, and later transferred to Puerto Rico by boat. The US Justice Department said that the boat trips organized by Yadvinder Bhamba and his co-conspirators were perilous as boat captains used old, damaged, cracked, unlicensed, overcrowded, and unsafe boats to make the journey.
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NDTV
5 February 2019
