On a cold night in 2022, 24-year-old Ashish Solanki (his name has been changed at his request) clicked away at the cash register of a 7-Eleven in SeaTac, a small city on the edge of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He had a set routine during his 11-hour shift at the convenience store. He scanned items one by one, waiting for a green light and a beep, followed by the tap of a credit card. After an approval message, he put the items into a paper bag to complete the transaction. If the card didn’t work, he used his patchy English. “Card not working, sir,” he would say, clearing at least 30 transactions each night.
He was 7,000 miles from his hometown of Jind, Haryana, where the nearest international airport is Delhi. A nonstop flight to Seattle takes 18 hours. But for Solanki, the journey to the United States had taken 74 days. “I jumped onto the other side of the border on Aug. 30, 2022, between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.,” he said, recalling how he had illegally entered the U.S. using a route that Indian travel agents call the “donkey route” (or “dunki” in the local accent).
The “donkey route” includes a combination of air, land and sea segments to reach the U.S. land border, cross it and then eventually file for asylum. It involves transit across Europe, West Africa and South America, and these journeys are planned and sold by Indian travel agents just like any other 10-day travel packages. But in this case, there is no return ticket, nor is asylum guaranteed.
A typical package includes tickets to different destinations and pickup and drop-off by local middlemen called “donkers,” who are also responsible for getting the migrants across various borders before they reach Mexico. Additionally, they provide training on how to surrender to the Border Patrol, what to expect in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center and how to claim asylum during the “Credible Fear Interview” with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The “donkey route” typically costs around $40,000 to $50,000 per person, and those who undertake these journeys spend years in the U.S. living as undocumented workers waiting for employment authorization and asylum hearings.
The “premium” package, which shrinks the 84-day journey and directly delivers the migrant to Mexico in a few days, costs an additional $20,000. Travel agents advertise this as a “no loss,” “no jungle” donkey route. It gets the migrants a Schengen visa and a stay at a boutique hotel until they reach Mexico.
People on the “donkey route” are often unaware of the realities of the journey and of life as an undocumented immigrant in the United States. Once on this trip, most migrants don’t have access to the main “donker” from India from whom they bought the travel package, and by that point they are at the mercy of the middlemen, who only announce each day’s agenda the morning of that day. Whenever there are hiccups en route or long wait times, they spend days, sometimes weeks, contained in “boarding houses” so as not to be caught by the local police.
After paying $40,000 — a large chunk of his family’s savings — to his travel agent, Solanki’s journey began with a flight to Ethiopia. From there he flew to Brazil, followed by Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama.
From Panama, the most dangerous part of the journey began. It involved crossing the Darien Gap, the only section of the Pan-American Highway that was never built. A slender slice of land between Panama and Colombia, it measures 66 miles. But since it is an unpaved terrain of surging rivers, muddy slopes and rock-strewn mountains, it has to be covered by foot, exposing people who take the risk to injury, disease or death. It took Solanki three days to traverse this jungle.
Out of the Darien, tired, desperate and sick, he underwent another journey of seven days on foot to Mexico City, where he was cooped up in a boarding house for 20 days until he was taken to a spot close to Yuma, Arizona. There, he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and voluntarily surrendered to the U.S. Border Patrol.
At the ICE detention center, a “donker” filed for a release bond and paid $3,000 to the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of Solanki, who then moved to Seattle, where he found the job at the 7-Eleven through his travel agent’s network.
He filed for asylum on his own, without the assistance of any lawyer, with the claim of persecution due to “race.” Currently, he is a trucker based in California.
From 2020 until 2024, there has been at least a 50% increase year on year in the number of illegal Indian immigrants at U.S. borders, including those who were expelled before they could seek asylum, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
The issue of migration — and the recent humiliating deportation of undocumented Indian nationals in shackles — will be at play this week as the Indian prime minister is expected to make his first visit (during Trump’s second term) to Washington.
In fiscal year 2020, there were 19,883 Indians identified at the northern, southern and coastal U.S. borders, followed by 30,662 in 2021. (In the U.S., a fiscal year begins on Oct. 1 and ends on Sept. 30 of the next year.)
In 2022, this number doubled to 63,927. The number of Indian immigrants who crossed the borders into the U.S. peaked in 2023, with 96,917, before dropping to 90,415 in 2024.
In just the first three months of the 2025 fiscal year, which started in October 2024, 18,625 Indians had crossed the U.S. borders — close to the number of Indians who had crossed the borders in the entire fiscal year of 2020.
Research by the Pew Research Center has suggested that more than 725,000 undocumented Indians were living in the country as of 2022, making them the third-largest group behind Mexicans and Salvadorans.
While deportations to India took place under the Biden administration, illegal immigration from the country came under the spotlight after Trump assumed office. It was recently reported that the Indian government would take back 18,000 Indians living in the U.S. without proper documentation.
The Indian government did not confirm the number of people who would return, but they said they were against illegal immigration and were ready to accept the deported Indians after verification. It did not object to the U.S. deporting its citizens.
“As part of India-U.S. cooperation on migration and mobility, both sides are engaged in a process to deter illegal migration. This is being done to create more avenues for legal migration from India to the U.S.,” said Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, in a statement. Political observers said the move was to placate Trump, whom Modi called a “dear friend” while congratulating him on X after the inauguration.
Over the last two decades, U.S.-India relations have evolved into a strong strategic partnership. Alongside growing defense, trade and technology cooperation, they also share concerns over regional security, especially when it comes to China. Modi and Trump could be seen sharing bear hugs during the latter’s first term, while both leaders hosted grand events at stadiums for each other in their respective countries.
But since Trump’s return, he has threatened action against both allies and adversaries regarding trade imbalances and illegal immigration as part of his “American First” policy. This appears to have encouraged the Modi-led government to issue prompt promises to comply and cooperate with the Trump administration’s deportation sweeps.
Earlier this month, when a U.S. military transport aircraft carrying 104 deported Indian immigrants landed in Amritsar, a city in the northwestern state of Punjab, India did not protest or complain. It included 19 women and 13 minors, among them a 4-year-old boy and two girls aged 5 and 7.
It was not the first time Indians had been deported from the U.S. Jaiswal said that more than 1,000 people had been brought back over the past year and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told the Indian Parliament that a total of 15,668 illegal Indian immigrants had been deported since 2009.
However, it was the first time a deportation had received significant media coverage in the country. Visuals of Indian citizens, who had spent the 40-hour flight home with shackles on their wrists and ankles, circulated on TV news and social media. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael W. Banks was one of the first people to share a video on X.
Later, deportees told journalists that they requested the military officials to “take [the shackles] off to eat or go to the bathroom,” but instead they were treated “horribly” and “without any regard.” “The way they looked at us, I’ll never forget it,” one of them said.
The scenes led to an uproar in the country, led by the opposition parties, which demonstrated outside Parliament, some wearing shackles and others mocking the much-touted friendship between Trump and Modi. The youth wing of the Indian National Congress burned an effigy of Trump during a protest in Delhi.
Responding to the outrage, Jaishankar defended the U.S. government policies to the Indian Parliament. He said that the “use of restraints” during deportation flights was carried out according to U.S. standard operating procedures in place since 2012 and added that New Delhi was engaging with Washington to ensure that deportees were not mistreated.
Jaiswal also mentioned that India has been cooperating with the U.S. to “create more avenues for legal migration” to the country.
Indians have been the greatest beneficiaries of the H1-B visa program, which allows for temporary employment of highly skilled foreign workers in particular occupations in the U.S. Studying for a postgraduate degree in the U.S. and getting picked for the visa via a finance or tech job has long been a common aspiration, and since 2015, over 70% of approved H-1B visas have gone to Indians.
Moreover, with a huge Indian diaspora residing in the U.S. — totaling a little over 5 million people — tourist visas to the country are also in high demand from family and friends of these residents. Since the pandemic, wait times for visa appointments at U.S. embassies and consulates in India have exceeded 400 days.
Apart from this hurdle, the Modi-led government’s stance on illegal immigration is not too different from Trump’s. Immigration is also a politically charged issue in India, especially in eastern states like Assam and West Bengal, which share a porous border with Bangladesh.
Politicians from right-wing parties, such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have used the issue to rally their base, often targeting Bangladeshis and Rohingyas in their speeches and calling them a threat to national security. The country’s largest detention center was built in Assam in 2019, and India has been looking to deport illegal immigrants from its own territory.
Furthermore, in a bid to boost American exports to India and avoid a trade war, the Indian government announced that it was slashing import duties on heavyweight American bikes like the iconic Harley Davidson, along with other cuts for technology, automobiles and industrial and waste imports, in its recent budget presented on Feb. 1.
In his first term, Trump criticized India’s steep tariffs, which included a 100% duty on Harleys, calling them unfair trade practices. After his recent electoral win, he also threatened the BRICS group of countries — of which India is a founding member — with steep tariffs if it sought to replace the dollar as a reserve currency. Recently, the White House said Trump held a “productive call” with Modi, pressing him to buy more U.S. arms and work toward a fairer trade balance between the countries.
Back home in India, families are taking stock of the new realities. They spend their life savings to provide the tens of thousands of dollars required to take the “donkey route” and meet the legal fees for seeking asylum in the U.S.
“They are selling their lands; they are selling their homes,” said Anju Agnihotri Chaba, a Punjab-based senior journalist with The Indian Express, one of the top national dailies in the country.
Families consider it an investment. “It is deep-rooted in the mindset that earning in dollars rather than rupees is going to be the source of prosperity,” she said.
Illegal migration to the U.S. predominantly comes from three states in India — Punjab and Haryana in the north and Gujarat in the west. Both Punjabi and Gujarati communities have historically been migrating to the U.S. for decades.
So when an unemployment crisis stifles young people’s hopes and they see no future at home, they are motivated to take the risk. Moreover, pop culture and real-life testimonies of people who have successfully migrated also influence them.
“Donkey” vloggers, who emerged on social media in the last few years, have fueled this migration trend. They share every step of their journey until they surrender their phone to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.
When they reappear online after a month-long sabbatical, it is often with a video titled “Buying iPhone 14 in USA #Donkey #India,” which serves as the perfect payoff for them and the viewers alike. Viewers flood the comment section of these videos requesting the contact details of travel agents, which are then shared by the migrants.
Solanki, too, was a star “donkey” YouTuber, with 40,000 subscribers, and made several videos tracking his journey, which racked up over 135,000 views.
Seeing the migrants achieve their goals despite hardships creates a ripple effect of copycat migrants and donkey vloggers. However, these accounts often omit the real dangers: the risks of being caught and imprisoned, the financial costs and the possibility of death.
Now, as deportees return and share their stories, they allege that they were assured by their agents that they would reach the U.S. legally in two weeks and blame them for providing misleading information about the journey.
Having lost their life savings, these deportees now face a future with lifelong debt, while also dealing with intense shame — though there are also those who have been flaunting it as a badge of honor. As the police are reaching out to families and deported people to track down the travel agents, they find that some have moved to undisclosed places.
In an earlier conversation, Chaba said this trend won’t stop until the business of the “donkers” or travel agents is properly dealt with. She said that they get arrested in India but explained that it is easy to get bail, and that the cycle needed to be broken by ensuring convictions.
Until recently, it was only when migrants who had embarked on these journeys got stuck or went missing that their families in India approached police stations to file complaints against the travel agents. But now, in a bid to crack down on illegal immigration, police forces in states like Punjab and Haryana have been asked to create special investigation teams to find and book the agents. The government has said it is working to bring in new immigration laws for safe, orderly and legal migration for employment abroad.
If Trump's intention was to send a message to Indians, it remains to be seen how the deportation planes might reshape migration trends between the countries.
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