Indian migrant arrested near U.S. border last year accused of using fake documents to apply to Ontario college

An Indian citizen who was part of the same group of migrants as a family that froze to death near the United States border in Manitoba last year has been accused of forgery in his home country, after allegedly using fake documents to apply to study in Canada.

The now 19-year-old man is accused of using forged high school transcripts in his application to Ontario's Loyalist College, according to a police document filed in court in the Gandhinagar region of Gujarat, a state in western India.

That document, filed last October, alleged the man's father paid a large sum of money for someone to get his son a study permit in Canada and then help him get over the border.

U.S. law enforcement officials said the man was among the seven Indian nationals arrested just south of the international border in January 2022, shortly before the bodies of the Patel family were discovered on the other side.

Authorities said at the time those seven people were part of the same group as the Patels — three-year-old Dharmik, his 11-year-old sister Vihangi, and their parents, Vaishali, 37, and Jagdish, 39. The Patels and the rest of the group got separated during the journey, according to authorities.

While no one from Loyalist College was made available for an interview, a spokesperson said the man applied to the college but never registered there as a student.

The college has since shared documents related to his application with RCMP and is co-operating with the related investigation, the spokesperson told CBC News in an email.

U.S. law enforcement officials said the man was deported after being arrested, but would not say where he was sent.

A Winnipeg immigration lawyer said a case like this suggests there are bigger problems in the system.

"It undermines the integrity of the whole program and the whole system," said Kenneth Zaifman, principal at Zaifman Law.

He said many post-secondary schools in Canada depend on international students financially and actively work to recruit more.

But as the number of out-of-country applications grows, so does the application backlog — which means immigration authorities aren't able to carefully vet each one.

"That's where you have the ability for people to exploit the system," said Zaifman, who added he's currently dealing with another case involving fraudulent documents in an international student's application at Loyalist College.

The man's plan to cross into the U.S. illegally was set in motion a year earlier, when someone who frequented his father's shop in India offered to help send his son to a foreign country, according to the police report, which was filed following a preliminary investigation.