In June, when six-year-old Gurupreet Kaur from Haryana died of thirst in the Arizona desert after crossing over to the US with her mother, the spotlight fell on the US’ southwest border with Mexico as the busiest entry point for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers from India to America.

Gurupreet’s mother was one of five Indians dropped off at a remote and infamous location near Tucson by human traffickers. Soon after the girl’s death, Sikh Coalition, an umbrella organisation for the  

community in the US, came to her mother’s rescue and she was released from an immigration detention centre in Arizona and allowed to travel to New York to be with her husband, who came to the US six years ago and submitted an asylum plea at an immigration court.

A New Trafficking Route It is not just Gurupreet and her family. Last month, two videos that went viral among Punjabi viewers showed an Indian family crossing the US Mexico border through a fence with men who appear to be coyotes, the local term for human traffickers.

economictimes.indiatimes.com, aUG 24, 2019