Man guilty of smuggling 400 people into the U.S. from India

A guilty plea from an Indian national revealed an elaborate, transnational human smuggling pipeline from India to the United States that smuggled at least 400 people through Puerto Rico.

Yadvinder Singh Bhamba, 60, an Indian national, pleaded guilty Jan. 18 to one count of conspiracy and 15 counts of smuggling aliens to the United States for profit before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sivia Carreño-Coll of the District of Puerto Rico. 

Carreño-Coll has recommended that District Judge Carmen C. Cerezo accept the guilty plea. Bhamba was charged in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the District of Puerto Rico on March 15, 2017.

According to court documents, since 2013, Bhamba had a leadership role in a human smuggling conspiracy operating out of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, India and elsewhere. As part of the conspiracy, Bhamba personally assisted around 400 people to illegally enter the U.S. between 2013 and 2015. He also oversaw and directed co-conspirators operating out of the Caribbean.

Bhamba and other members of the conspiracy made flight arrangements for aliens to travel from India through other countries – including Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Iran, Panama, Venezuela, Belize, and Haiti – to the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic was used as a staging area, where aliens were housed before being transported to the United States. 

The organization brought groups of aliens from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico or Florida by boat. Once the aliens reached Puerto Rico or Florida, they were picked up  and taken to stash houses until flights could be arranged to California, New York, or elsewhere in the United States. Bhamba and others arranged for fraudulent identifications for some aliens to use in the United States.

The boat trips organized by Bhamba and his co-conspirators were perilous. Boat captains used old, damaged, cracked, unlicensed, overcrowded, and unsafe boats to make the journey. In at least one instance, an alien died in a boat on his way to the United States.

At times, the smugglers would take passports from the aliens during their journeys, physically assault them, and threaten their families to collect money. The clients paid between $30,000 and $85,000 to be smuggled from India to the United States. From at least 2013 to 2016, human smuggling was Bhamba’s primary source of income.

After authorities intercepted a vessel transporting clients from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, resulted in the detention of 15 clients in the summer of 2016, Bhamba was arrested in the Dominican Republic in August 2017, and thereafter transferred to Puerto Rico.

A sentencing hearing before Judge Cerezo is scheduled for April 23, 2019.