US travel: Woman from Ahmedabad hired as mom, wife

AHMEDABAD: A 54-year-old woman has successfully pulled off at least 10 disguises, playing the role of a mother or a wife, to facilitate illegal immigration to the US. The woman, who lives in the Walled City, is a close friend of the owner of a gymkhana in the city. As she has links to influential people, she has not been touched by any investigating agency.As TOI reported earlier, human smugglers create dummy families, where a man, woman and children do not even know each other are illegally sent abroad as one family.Using this modus operandi, human smugglers such as Bharat Patel alias Bobby, sent the woman to the US at least 10 times with different men and children. Bharat Patel is also a partner in the gymkhana in question, which was embroiled in controversy in July 2021, Bharat Patel is also allegedly involved in sending people to the US through Mexico and Canada. He also allegedly sent the family of four from Dingucha village in Gandhinagar, who froze to death while crossing the Canada-US border on January 16.Patel along with his partners in Punjab — Charanjit Singh and Guramrit Singh alias Pablo — had is suspected to have sent the six men from Gujarat who nearly drowned in the St Regis on the Canada-US border on April 28. “The woman, a close aide of the gymkhana owner, got her passport in 2001.Between 2018 and February 2022, she had made at least 10 trips to the US via Canada and ferried many ‘dummy families’ to the US,” said a police officer.Sources in the police said she is paid about Rs 5 lakh for each trip and uses a different name each time.The officer said she may have gone to the US as a “carrier” before 2018, but police are yet to gather evidence of journeys from that period.