FIRST READING: How lax immigration brought one of Canada’s most dangerous gangs to life

Article content

“Extortion events typically begin with anonymous calls or messages over encrypted chat applications demanding large payments, sometimes in the range of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. Circumstances escalate to gunfire at homes or storefronts and, in some cases, arson when demands are refused,” reads a summary by FINTRAC, Canada’s official financial intelligence agency.

Article content

The crimes have occurred in Canadian cities with South Asian communities, but have particularly reached crisis levels in Surrey, B.C., where shootings and arson attacks are now sometimes occurring multiple times per day.

Article content

In January, Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke called on the federal government to declare a national state of emergency, or “invoke equivalent extraordinary measures,” to clamp down on the wave of foreign extortionists.

Article content

Lax Canadian border policies are already known to have led to situations in which foreign criminal organizations moved their people into Canada for the specific purpose of committing crimes.

Article content

Just on Friday, for instance, the Durham Regional Police announced the details of Project Jetsetter, a massive dragnet of “organized groups travelling to Canada for the purpose of executing high-profit crimes.”

Article content

Article content

Known as “criminal tourism,” Project Jetsetter arrested more than three dozen predominantly Romanian nationals accused of entering Canada via legal means before embarking on predetermined crime sprees featuring everything from insurance scams to organized shoplifting.

Article content

The Bishnoi Gang’s strategy is slightly different in that it’s usually able to skip the first step of moving its operatives into Canada.

Article content

Instead, it’s known to recruit from Indian nationals who were already in Canada, particularly in the wake of the 2022-2024 migration surge.

Article content

In April, a special bulletin by FINTRAC described how Bishnoi and groups like it were comprised largely of “individuals already living in Canada.”

Article content

“These groups appear to recruit or rely on individuals already living in Canada to act as financial intermediaries (‘money mules’), enforcers, or ‘foot soldiers’, typically financially vulnerable, young male Indian nationals in Canada on study permits,” it wrote.

Article content

In February, B.C. publicly urged the federal government to crack down on Canada’s various temporary migration streams, citing their open exploitation by foreign criminal organizations.

Article content

Article content

“Law enforcement agencies in B.C. have encountered cases where individuals connected to extortion-related activities may possess expired visas, have pending refugee claims, or non-compliant student visas, while actively participating in or linked to violent offences,” read a statement.

Article content

In the immediate wake of COVID lockdowns, the government of then-prime minister Justin Trudeau oversaw Canada’s largest-ever surge in Canadian immigration numbers, with more than one million foreign nationals per year entering the country between 2022 and 2024.

Article content

According to an October analysis by CIBC, 60 per cent of that surge was “non-permanent residents.”

Article content

“Many of these NPRs initially arrived as students, but transitioned to work permits through a patchwork of lax rules, some which exempted employers from labor market assessments, and little government oversight,” read the report.

Article content

Article content

Perhaps more relevant to Bishnoi recruiters, however, was how many of those extra students ran into financial problems shortly upon arrival.