ACCORDING to The United States Customs and Border Protection Division (CBP) sources, some 171 Bangladeshis have been detained at Mexico’s Laredo border shared with USA since October to April 12, 2017. They reportedly attempted to enter the United States illegally through this border. However, it appears, for quite some time the Laredo border of Texas has become the main doorway to enter the United States by South Asian and Afghan illegal immigrants through Latin America.
Referring to illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, the Immigration Reform Dot Com, the largest and most influential immigration reform organization in the US published an article recently. It stated that, there are ‘special concerns about Bangladeshi immigrants’ for two reasons – first, the presence of Isis and Al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent and some other active militant groups in Bangladesh. They are collecting members from Bangladesh. So it is possible that some of these illegal Bangladeshi immigrants may have links to those terrorist organizations. And second, if people from Bangladesh can enter Latin America and later enter the US then the potential terrorists can get encouraged to carry out terror attacks in the USA.
The truth, however, frequency of terror attacks in Bangladesh has always been significantly low despite the presence of a few radical and extremist groups. Also Bangladeshis have been rarely involved in any major terror attacks occurred in North America and Europe. We find the ‘special concerns’ utterly baseless. True, our illegal immigrants are known for taking life risks to enter Europe or America but that is purely financial reason – to seek shelter and jobs. So, branding them as potential terrorists is a sheer injustice being done to them. There are no records inside USA that Bangladeshis were in any capacity involved in carrying out terror strikes. Most of the attacks and mass shootings recorded in America in the recent past were executed by derailed Americans.
Following the Immigration Reform Organisation’s claims, the Los Angeles Times also wrote the numbers of Bangladeshi, Indian, Nepalese and Pakistanis illegally entering the United States through Latin America has become huge. According to official statistics, the report said that in the 11 months before August 2016, 4,060 people of these four countries entered the United States, among whom 3,604 were detained. But it did not link terrorism with the detained immigrants from Asian countries. We expect, American authorities to voice their concerns based on logic and reality – not out of anti-Islamic sentiments similar to Mr. Trump.
Last of all, our embassy and consulates in America must right away look into the issue, and guarantee the well-being of these immigrants. We wonder why increasing numbers of people are still trying to go to other countries as illegal migrants when government is busy to get status of a developing country.
