After Indian officials complained of a “well-planned conspiracy” to use Canadian student visas for smuggling Indian nationals into America, the Canadian government promised to crack down on visa abuse.

According to India’s Directorate of Enforcement (an umbrella agency that coordinates investigations of interdepartmental money laundering), a sophisticated criminal organization in India is systematically using student visas to smuggle Indians to Canada. Criminals are said to have targeted 100 Canadian colleges and Universities.

The network quickly smuggled the Indians across the border to the United States once they reached Canada. Directorate of Enforcement reports that none of the Indians smuggled to the U.S. by the operation ever attended a Canadian university with their fraudulently acquired student visas.

The smuggling operation received $100,000 from each client to slip across the border to the U.S.

In January 2022, a 39-year-old man named Jagdish B. Baldevbhai Paitel paid to have himself, his wife, and their two children transported to Canada. They were then smuggled from Manitoba into Minnesota.

This plan required the Patel family to walk across a barren stretch of the Canadian border on a night when the wind chill was 36 degrees below zero. The Patels were found frozen to death by Canadian officials in the wilderness. Jagdish died while holding his son’s body wrapped in a cloth.

Both India and Canada were outraged by the tragic death of this family. Indian officials have revealed that there is a growing pipeline of illegal migrants to the United States via Canada. Smugglers are openly advertising their service in certain Indian villages. The residents of these villages are selling their farms and homes to pay extortionate fees to smuggling rings. Entire neighborhoods have been depopulated.

The diplomatic relations between Canada, India, and Pakistan have declined dramatically in the last few years. This is especially true after Canada accused India of killing Sikh activist Hardeep Nijjar on June 20, 2023. In this tense environment, Indian officials did not hesitate to accuse Canada of facilitating large-scale human trafficking by leaving the student visa program vulnerable.

The Directorate of Enforcement reported that two “entities” involved in smuggling refer thousands of Indians to Canadian programs for foreign students every year.

Colleges and Institutes Canada President Pari Johnston responded by saying that the international student program was “well-managed” and promising to crack down on abuses. Some provincial officials have blamed the Canadian government for not doing enough in order to monitor visa applications.

A spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities said to CBC News that “as our government repeatedly has done, we continue calling on the federal to enact stronger border control measures in order to protect Ontario and our institutions as well as all of Canada.”

Kelly Sundberg, a former Canada Border Services Agency agent, told CBC immigration fraud is “staggeringly high” and has been for “quite a while.”

Sundberg, a professor in criminology at Mount Royal University now, says that Canada lacks both the manpower as well as the technology used by the United States for detecting identity fraud.

He said: “I am not surprised that people in Canada, America, and abroad have coordinated to exploit our open system.”

Other experts told CBC Canadian colleges do not go far enough to eliminate fraud, particularly small “fly by night” schools which are largely paper fiction.

“Some of these colleges which were involved in this trade are not colleges at all.” “They’re an old office with an outdated version of Microsoft Word and that’s their entire curriculum,” said Dalhousie University Associate Professor Robert Huish.

Canada is also being pressured by the United States to deal with its immigration and border security issues. Donald Trump, the president-elect, has threatened to impose tariffs against Canadian and Mexican goods to tighten up their borders and stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the United States.