Couple in Gujarat leaves govt job, spends Rs 1 crore to settle US illegally, held at airport

A Gujarati couple’s desperate attempt to settle in the United States at any cost landed them in jail. Hitesh and Binal Patel from the Kheda district of Gujarat were arrested at the Ahmedabad Airport on Sunday for allegedly trying to fly to the US on fake passports. Hitesh, 32, and Binal, 30, were planning to travel to the US via the Dubai-Mexico route. They wanted to settle abroad with their four-year-old daughter. Hitesh's sister and brother-in-law are settled in the US.

This was not the first time when the couple tried to go the US. In 2018, they tried to reach US illegally on fake passport, but were deported from Ireland. Four years later, they paid Rs 1 crore to a human smuggler to get them across the US border illegally via Mexico, while his wife left her job as a primary teacher in a government school.

After their deportation from Ireland, the Patels approached a human smuggler. The agent from Mumbai took their passports and gave them new ones after removing the passport pages with stamps marking them as deportees and added new blank pages.


However, an immigration officer at the airport caught them after figuring out that they had been deported to India earlier but the stamps were missing from passports.