Undercover--On the back-track trail
THEY are always in the news, but now `back-trackers’ who are nabbed and placed before the courts rarely make it to the front page of newspapers. The `Baldeo tapes’ saga about the `big names’ here, named by a mastermind running a back-track (illegal immigrants) network between Guyana, Canada and the United States, was big news a few years back. Nothing big came out of allegations that top officials here were involved in that particular back-track operation and now magistrates usually impose a fine on back-trackers unlucky enough to be caught and warn them not to try it again. The body trade, however, is still big business, Undercover found out. A source estimates that over the last decade, almost 200,000 people left Guyana `back-track' through the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri, alone. That was "before de system get skin-up (exposed)", the source explained. Children as young as five years old have been known to travel `back-track' through the airport to North America. There was a period when about half the number of passengers aboard flights out of Guyana were travelling `back-track', passing through airline check-in counters and immigration, a source close to the airport confirmed. Undercover learnt that one of the most critical roles in the back-track ring was played by some airline employees at the airport. These would turn a blind eye to false documents presented at the airport and are paid as much as US$600 a head to cooperate. Failure to cooperate with back-track racketeers can be dangerous for these airline employees. There have been death threats and cases where airline employees were actually assaulted because they were not willing to be involved. Undercover was told two employees of a major airline operating here refused to cooperate with back-track ring leaders and, one of them, a senior official, was reportedly beaten and chocked on a street in South Ruimveldt, Georgetown. Another `uncooperative’ airline employee fled for his life while in the United States after being confronted by gunmen in a house who recognised him as a hard nut to crack. "A boy he went to school with, carried him into a house and when he entered, some men asked if he is the guy from the airline and they pulled out guns," a source told Undercover. When back-tracking through the airport first started in the late 1980s, it was with the tampering of passports by inserting bogus visas. At that time United States visas did not bear the passport holder's picture. In the early stages of the back-track industry, operators also used false passports for countries that did not need visas to enter the U.S. or Canada, in which they would insert the client's picture. The industry has grown so lucrative that clients are paying between US$10,000 to US$12,000 a head to get to the U.S. and Canada. When the authorities in the U.S. first sniffed out the bogus visa scheme, they intensified training among officials there, Undercover found out. However, the back-track racketeers in Guyana implemented a back-up plan by inserting pictures of their clients into other people's passports which had valid visas. After paying an initial fee, the client would get back his passport from the operators with a bogus U.S. or Canadian visa in it, and will in some cases pay half of the money in Guyana and the balance when he or she arrives overseas. When the clients arrives in the U.S. or Canada they are taken into `custody' by the counterparts of the back-trackers. They are held in a building until they pay the balance of the money owed. Undercover was told of a situation where clients did not pay and were forced to slave in factories and other places until the debts were cleared. Clients from Guyana have been kidnapped by rival groups on arrival in the U.S. or Canada. In these cases, the snatched client would have to pay the kidnapper the remainder of the fee. While in the custody of counterparts of the back-trackers in North America, some women, a few married, have had to endure sexual and other kinds of abuse before they are allowed to join their relatives. "One big back-track man down here actually left his wife for one of his clients," a source told Undercover. In most cases, the back-trackers have never travelled before and ring-leaders usually hold training sessions for clients where they actually rehearse immigration procedures. At the classes, clients are taught what to expect and what kinds of questions they are likely to be asked by officials at the airports in North America. They are also dressed up in `presentable’ clothes for the trips by the agents in Guyana. Another danger for these clients, because of their ignorance and lack of exposure to travelling, is that some back-track operators plant drugs on them without their knowledge, and some innocent persons have been jailed. On one occasion, officials at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York held a back-tracker with drugs and allowed him to pass through. But when the counterpart of the back-track operator in Guyana met him at the airport, he too was nabbed and both were charged. The body smugglers use a system called `look alike' which involves the use of U.S. green cards and U.S passports and citizenship books. These documents are usually rented by North American residents to persons in Guyana for between US$2,000 to US$3,000. The cost of renting a citizenship book is usually higher. Contrary to the belief that many persons travel on stolen documents, a source pointed out that such instances are rare because people usually report lost documents within hours or days and the authorities in North America would be on the lookout for these. In most cases, the citizenship books would have the face of the holder when he or she was younger and the back-track racketeers would scout around for young `look-alike' faces to match. Forged Emergency Travel Documents are also used in the back-track racket. Some of Guyana's most popular back-track operators are on the East Coast Demerara, Corentyne, West Bank Demerara and East Bank Demerara. One East Bank Demerara village is believed to be a haven for back-track racketeers. Perhaps one of the most successful schemes in the back-track racket was a system called `switching' which takes place on the aircraft itself. Sources confirmed that `switching' was prevalent when the Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC) used to fly to Curacao and Trinidad en route to the U.S. and there was some speculation that those routes were virtually financed by back-trackers. Sources said that even after certain persons in authority concluded that the Trinidad and Curacao stops were not profitable, a senior official insisted that the airline should continue to make the stops. Under that scheme, the client had documents to travel to Curacao while an agent of the racketeer, who would also be on the plane, in most cases a U.S. resident, gave the client bogus documents onward to North America. The agent, originally booked to travel to the U.S., would disembark in Curacao or Trinidad using the name of the back-tracker. This scheme was very easy because the aircraft's manifest would show that the back-tracker departed in Curacao or Trinidad and that the correct number of passengers was on the flight to the U.S. Tampering with the manifest and collusion by Immigration officials are key components in the scam which also involves BWIA aircraft. When authorities in North America seem to be fighting the problem, back-trackers are studying loopholes and coming up with new schemes, especially to go into Canada. Back-trackers would destroy their passports with false visas and other documents while on the aircraft and throw these in the trash or flush them down the plane's toilet. This is serious for the airline because when the back-trackers arrive in Canada, they have no documents to present to Immigration officials there and pretend not to know to speak English. There have been cases where Canadian authorities have actually sifted through the trash aboard the GAC Boeing 757 jet in Toronto and found bits of discarded travel documents after detaining suspected back-trackers. "What is amazing is that these Guyanese are usually talking English throughout the flight, but when they reach Toronto, all of a sudden they forget the language," a source recalled. In most cases this is successful because these people are put before the courts in Toronto and are placed on about Cdn$5,000 bail, after which they disappear and skip over to the United States. Undercover understands that the main aim of the rings is for the back-trackers to enter Canada then there are mechanisms in place to get them to the U.S. Entire families rarely travel back-track through the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri. However, children travelling as unaccompanied minors stand a better chance of back-tracking on bogus documents successfully because they are not usually subjected to rigourous scrutiny like adults are. Apart from that, the airline handles all their documents until the minors are handed over to a waiting relative in North America. But one such scheme was busted recently where three children travelled to North America and on arrival the person who was to have collected them at the airport got `cold feet'. Subsequently, another accomplice, who was not the authorised person to reach the children at the airport in North America, began asking officials questions about the children and they became suspicious. By this time one of the children became afraid and actually tried to run away in the airport terminal but was held. Back-trackers to North America, more than 90 per cent of them Indo-Guyanese, have no problem getting jobs although they are illegal aliens, because of networks set up in closely knit communities in New York. Popular terms in the back-track business are `heads' (persons), `docoes' (documents) and `books' (passports). "Back-tracking will never stop because the people operating the rings don't see it as anything demoralising, but as a form of reuniting families and making money...it will never stop," one observer told Undercover. "..there are people out there who want to get to the United States or Canada and would do anything to get there with the belief that they can achieve what they could never attain in Guyana." 
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