Ahmedabad: Most of the 33 Gujarati deportees who landed at Ahmedabad airport from the US on Thursday have gone incommunicado, fearing social scrutiny and legal trouble. As instructed by their agents, who had sold them the US dreams, they locked their homes and shifted to other places to avoid any communication.
Fourteen of them are from Gandhinagar, nine from Mehsana, two from Ahmedabad and one each from Banaskantha, Vadodara, and Bharuch. Primarily, those who have gone into hiding belong to North Gujarat.
A relative of one of the deportees from Kalol said, “My cousin and his wife are under severe mental stress after their deportation. They fear social stigma and being labelled losers for their failed attempt to sneak into the US. People from North Gujarat often move to the US, driven by their aspirations and peer pressure. If they fail in their attempt to make it to the US, they face scrutiny from their community.”
A source privy to the development said many of these deportees want to go to the US again through the illegal route and are therefore maintaining cordial relations with their agents. They do not want to disclose any information and risk harassment of their agents by law enforcement officials. A source in the state police said, “So far, police have only verified their names and details. It has not been verified if they used their original passport to facilitate their illegal journey or had used ‘hum shakal’ passport (belonging to a lookalike). To verify these details, cops need to procure data from the passport office. By going underground, they have succeeded in evading law enforcement agencies.”
Another source in the human smuggling network said that this is the standard pattern followed by most illegal immigrants who are deported since they would want to attempt taking the illegal route again to chase their US dreams.