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Notes -
Plane grounded in France over human trafficking fears
A small and largely ignored story from this afternoon (now pushed off the BBC news homepage, and barely reported on in the American press).
The official facts, then, are that a chartered Romanian plane flying from the UAE to Nicaragua, but carrying 300 Indians, was grounded en route in France because of an “anonymous tip” about “human trafficking”.
The details of the story raise some interesting questions. There is no Indian community in Nicaragua to speak of; the relationship is so unimportant that neither nation even has an embassy in the other (India’s affairs are handled via their embassy in Panama, Nicaragua’s via their embassy in Tokyo). There is no plausible reason for Indians to be trafficked for labor in Nicaragua, which has a large poor domestic labor pool itself and high unemployment.
So what explains this curious set of affairs? Reading between the lines suggests a different story, one that is barely even hinted at in the plain text.
The Indians on board intended to immigrate illegally to the United States, part of a growing number of migrants from outside the Americas now using the southern route. The plane was chartered by an organization promising to facilitate at least part of that journey, with someone who doesn’t ask questions.
The “anonymous tip” was almost certainly from the United States, which is waging a largely futile war against the above by trying to limit global migrant inflows to Central America. Grounding a foreign plane transiting two other foreign nations is something the US has done before, but would prefer to avoid if possible, hence the “anonymous tip” whose source the French obviously know (grounding a plane merely traversing one’s airspace because of an anonymous tip about some passengers, barring threat of imminent terror attack, isn’t something countries do often) but choose not to share.
As long as birthright citizenship exists, the United States will be uniquely attractive to any would-be illegal migrant. No other major wealthy nation (other than Canada, which almost necessarily requires migrants to traverse the US to reach it) promises the descendants of illegal migrants immediate, guaranteed citizenship.
What's the usual outcome of such groundings? I presume there are issues with seizing an aircraft indefinitely when it belongs to a foreign nation, and no actual crime has been committed, yet.
If refused permission for onward travel, the carrier would have to return the passengers to their point of origin or home country, and would then keep the plane, after the immediate legal proceedings are over. They could then be sued and/or criminally charged if the evidence exists. The plane wouldn’t be seized indefinitely unless there were some weird circumstances.
One wrinkle is that the passengers in this case arguably could claim asylum in France, and although it’s unlikely their claims would be accepted because France does consider India a safe country, they probably wouldn’t be deported any time soon. But they seemingly haven’t technically passed through French customs/immigration, they’re stuck airside, so it’s an unusual situation.
My understanding is also that any airline that was perceived as doing anything other than maximally cooperating with immigration authorities in a given country would probably be denied landing slots in future.
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