In a significant development, a 40-year-old Indian national residing in Canada has pleaded guilty to the crime of smuggling multiple Indian nationals from Canada into the United States for financial gain. Simranjit ‘Shally’ Singh has confessed to six counts of alien smuggling and three counts of conspiracy to commit alien smuggling during a court appearance in Albany, New York on Friday.
The US government requested Singh’s arrest, leading to his detention in Ontario, Canada, on June 28, 2022. Following extradition from Canada to the US on March 30 this year, Singh was presented before the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of New York.
Over the course of one year, from March 2020 to March 2021, Singh admitted to facilitating the smuggling of several Indian nationals from Canada into the US. The smuggling operation utilized Cornwall Island and the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation in the St. Lawrence River region as entry points into the US.
The dangerous nature of this smuggling route was tragically highlighted in March, when authorities recovered the bodies of four Indian and four Romanian migrants from the St. Lawrence River in Akwesasne, situated approximately 120 kilometers west of Montreal.