Human traffickers at Peace Arch Park sentenced for attempting to smuggle eight people across U.S./Canada border

A federal judge in the U.S. District Court in Seattle recently sentenced two men to prison for smuggling people near Peace Arch Historical State Park, while another man faces sentencing later this month and a fourth member has a trial scheduled in May.

Investigators connected the group to two known incidents in November and December 2023 in which eight Indian citizens attempted to cross near the park in Blaine. Three of the members were residents of Santa Rosa, California, while one was an Indian citizen living in the U.S. on a student visa.

According to court records, on November 27, 2023, a motion-activated camera filmed multiple people jumping a fence near Boundary Village Apartments on A Street in Blaine. The apartments are roughly a quarter-mile east of Peace Arch Park and a few hundred feet west of the Pacific Highway port of entry on State Highway 543.

U.S. Border Patrol agents saw five people run into a white minivan near the apartment complex. After pulling the van over, the agents found five Indian citizens in the van, driven by Bobby Joe Green, 68.

Sushil Kumar, 35, and Rajat Rajat, 26, instructed the group on how to cross the U.S./Canada border, according to the investigation. Rajat paid Green to transport the group from the border, and Rajat asked for money from those being smuggled.

In December 2023, Rajat met with three Indian citizens in Peace Arch Park and directed them to cross through the park and get into a car allegedly driven by Sneha, according to federal prosecutors. Sneha is a 20-year-old Indian citizen living in the U.S. on a student visa who goes by one name.

Those being trafficked across the border were each charged between $5,000 and $10,000 to cross, according to U.S. District Judge Tana Lin. Lin said that the people being smuggled were vulnerable.

“That they wanted to be in the country doesn’t mean they were not exploited,” Lin said. “Human smuggling undermines our country’s ability to regulate the border at a real cost.”

Three of four defendants pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bring in and transport certain aliens for profit. Kumar was sentenced to six months in prison on March 5 and Green was sentenced to four months in prison with three years of supervised release on March 13. Rajat is awaiting sentencing scheduled for Wednesday, April 23.

Sneha pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial scheduled to start Monday, May 12, according to court records. Sneha was arrested in Renton and released on an appearance bond.

Jason Givens, a spokesperson for CBP, told The Northern Light in June 2024 that Border Patrol had seen a “dramatic increase” in illegal border crossings in and around Peace Arch Historical State Park, which is located on both sides of the U.S./Canada border.

In 2021, Border Patrol had 112 encounters at the land border in the Blaine sector. That number increased to 407 in 2022, 1,489 in 2023, and 1,732 encounters halfway through 2024.