Indian software engineer Amrutha Tamanam cut short her vacation in Vijayawada after former US President Donald Trump abruptly announced a $100,000 fee for H-1B visa holders. As she scrambled to return to her home in Austin, Texas, far-right trolls on fringe platforms attempted to block Indians from booking flights, launching what they called the “clog the toilet” campaign.
According to AFP, these coordinated efforts emerged on the far-right forum 4chan, where users urged each other to overwhelm online reservation systems by holding seats on India-US routes without completing bookings. The intention, they openly claimed, was to prevent Indian visa holders from returning to the United States before the policy took effect.
Although the White House later clarified that the hefty fee would be a one-time payment not applicable to current H-1B holders, several US-based employers had already warned their workers abroad to fly back immediately or risk being stranded.
Tamanam told AFP that she faced repeated website crashes and shortened checkout windows while trying to book her ticket, finally securing a one-way Qatar Airways seat to Dallas for nearly $2,000 – more than twice her initial round-trip fare. “It was hard for me to book a ticket and I paid a huge fare for the panic travel,” she said.
On 4chan and associated Telegram groups, racist posts openly encouraged supporters to “keep them in India” by sabotaging airline booking systems. While some users claimed to block hundreds of seats on flights, Air India told AFP that its website continued to function normally without disruption.
Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said the operation was designed to trigger “panic among H-1B visa holders.” She warned that such far-right online spaces foster radicalization, noting that several US mass shooters had posted manifestos on 4chan.
The H-1B visa program permits US companies to hire foreign professionals with specialized skills, including scientists and software engineers. Around 85,000 visas are granted annually through a lottery system, with Indian nationals making up nearly three-quarters of the recipients.
Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, told AFP that the incident underscores how extremist campaigns now transcend borders. “What is relevant is how rapidly it spread, how diverse the nations represented were, and how shared antipathy across international borders can be mobilized online,” he said.
Screenshots shared on 4chan claimed success in holding back dozens of seats from airlines. One user boasted they had “100 seats locked,” while another said they were “clogging the last available seat” on a Delhi-to-Newark flight.
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