The State Department said on Monday it would place visa restrictions on the “owners, executives, and senior officials” of Indian travel agencies accused of “knowingly facilitating illegal immigration to the united States.”
“Our immigration policy aims not only to inform foreign nationals about the dangers of illegal immigration to the United States but also to hold accountable individuals who violate our laws, including facilitators of illegal immigration,” said State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce.
Bruce did not name the individuals or agencies in India that would be affected by the visa ban. She said the decision was made based on information gathered by the U.S. diplomatic mission to India, which has diligently warned Indian nationals they could face deportation if they overstay their visas — even if they are currently part of the Visa Waiver Program, which has a 90-day limit on the duration of visitors remaining in the U.S. without a tourist visa.
The Times of India (TOI) noted that two deportation cases involving Indian nationals made headlines recently:
Ranjani Srinivasan, a Ph.D. student at Columbia University, fled to Canada after her visa was revoked for allegedly participating in a pro-Palestine protest, though she did not participate in the protest. Ranjani was made an example by the Department of Homeland Security as to how people should deport themselves out of the U.S. to avoid arrest.
Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri was arrested for his alleged link with Hamas — his wife is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, a former aide of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. He has been released by a court order that said the Trump administration could not prove what national security risk Khan Suri posed.
TOI dramatically edited the Srinivasan story, although it is true that no less than DHS Secretary Kristi Noem highlighted her as a laudable example of self-deportation:
Srinivasan was specifically in trouble for failing to disclose her summons on charges of participating in an illegal pro-Hamas protest on the Columbia campus last year. Her lawyers argue the charges were unwarranted, and they were eventually dropped, but she was still required to disclose the summons on her visa renewal form. She characterized her failure to do so as a “mistake.” Her supporters characterized it as the sort of mistake that would have been allowed to slide before the second Trump administration.
Srinivasan also made deliberate attempts to evade the authorities before taking her “self-deportation” flight out of LaGuardia, which is not a good look for anyone who seeks to earn the hospitality of the U.S. government.
Badar Khan Suri was indeed released last week from the Texas detention center where he has been held since March after he was arrested in Arlington. He accused immigration officials of treating him like a “sub-human” and holding him without charges.
As with Srinivasan, Suri’s story is a little more complicated than being arbitrarily arrested because he was married to a relative of a Hamas official. Two days after the savage Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, he wrote a Facebook post defending the massacre as a legitimate effort by Palestinians to “fight back against the settler colonialism of Israel.” A few days later, he wrote another Facebook post questioning whether the October 7 attacks happened at all.
In any event, neither of those cases is likely the reason for the State Department’s aggressive action against Indian travel agencies.
The Hindustan Times noted on Tuesday that the first time U.S. military aircraft were employed in a deportation flight, it was to remove over 300 Indian nationals who paid Indian travel agents to smuggle them into the United States using elaborate “donkey routes.”
“Donkey routes,” or “dunki routes” as they are known in Punjabi, are elaborate — and often dangerous — migration schemes that send Indian travelers to Latin American countries with loose visa requirements. From there, the migrants travel through jungles and deserts, on foot or loaded into freight trucks, until they get across the Mexican border.
These routes were created decades ago, and they worked like a charm — raking in thousands of dollars per illegal migrant for the Indian travel agents who organized them — until two things happened: a 2023 documentary by an Indian filmmaker exposed the scheme, and then Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025. The first group of “dunkis” was caught at the border within weeks of Trump’s second inauguration.
One reason donkey routes are so popular is that the travel agents who arrange them are not committing any crimes under Indian law. The illegal activity does not begin until the migrants have bounced through several Latin American countries that are perfectly legal for Indian citizens to visit.
Indian travel agents who do not participate in donkey-route schemes strongly supported the State Department’s visa ban.
“As a firm that facilitates genuine student admissions abroad, we fully support measures that maintain the integrity of the process,” Ritesh Desai, owner of an agency called Ryna Overseas, told the Hindustan Times.
Desai pointed out that illegal immigration schemes make it harder for legitimate travelers, businesspeople, and students to obtain the travel documents they need.
Kuljit Singh Hayer, president of the Punj-Aab Travel Agent’s Association, also welcomed the State Department’s action, but suggested it could be difficult to enforce.
“First and foremost, how will they detect or bring on record the travel agencies involved in facilitating illegal immigration to the U.S.? The travel agents involved in such illegal activities operated under dummy names,” he noted.
Curiously, almost no U.S. media outlets mentioned the donkey routes when reporting on the State Department’s visa ban — making the action seem random and inexplicable, rather than a serious attempt to deal with a long-standing border issue.
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