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The United States Customs and Border Protection said on Friday the number of Indians arrested for illegally entering the U.S. has nearly tripled thus far in 2018, making them one of the largest groups of illegal aliens apprehended.

CBP spokesman Salvador Zamora said, paying smuggling rings between $25,000-$50,000 per person, a growing number of Indians are illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and claiming asylum for persecution.

Many present viable claims, but a large number are economic migrants with fraudulent petitions that swamp the system and can cause legitimate cases to be "washed out" in the high volume of fraud, Zamora said in an interview.

Zamora said the CBP expects that the data for the fiscal year that ends on September 30 will show "around 9,000" Indian nationals had been apprehended versus 3,162 in the fiscal year 2017.

About 4,000 Indians who entered the U.S. Illicitly this year did so over a three-mile stretch of border fence at Mexicali, Zamora said.

"The word got out that Mexicali is a safe border city which favors their crossing into the United States," he said.

Immigration attorney said asylum seekers range from lower caste "untouchable" Indians facing death threats for getting married outside their class to Sikhs claiming political persecution.

Fraudulent asylum seekers often present "cut and paste" evidence identical to that of else migrants, Zamora said.

Between 2012 to 2017, about 42.2 percent of Indian asylum cases were denied, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. That compares with denial rates of 79 percent for El Salvadorans and 78 percent for Hondurans.

After Mexicans, Honduras, citizens of Guatemala, and El Salvador were most likely to enter the U.S. illegally in 2018, according to Border Patrol data. Indians still have some way to go to outnumber the more or less 30,000 El Salvadorans who entered the U.S. illegally in 2018, the data showed.

After being held in the U.S., Indians are often bonded out of detention by human trafficking rings, Zamora said. They then get into indentured servitude in businesses ranging from hotels to convenience stores to pay off smuggling debts and bond fees, Zamora said.

By Sowmya Sangam