‘Want to keep them in India? Clog the toilet!’ How far-right trolls choked India-US flight reservations after H-1B visa fee

Washington: A coordinated online campaign by far-right trolls deliberately sought to disrupt flight bookings from India to the United States after Trump introduced a fee hike on H-1B visas, making it significantly harder for Indian visa holders to return home amid recent visa policy changes.

Austin-based software engineer Amrutha Tamanam, vacationing in India, found herself caught in the chaos after former President Donald Trump announced a sudden $100,000 fee for the H-1B visa she holds. As she rushed to secure a flight back to the US, she faced repeated website crashes and blocked bookings, a direct result of the trolls’ campaign.

The far-right operation, primarily organised on the message board 4chan and spread across fringe forums like Telegram, encouraged users to “clog the flight reservation system” by placing holds on popular India-US flights without completing purchases. The aim was to deny or delay Indian visa holders from securing timely travel.

One 4chan thread read: "Indians are just waking up after the H1B news. Want to keep them in India? Clog the flight reservation system!" Users bragged about locking dozens of seats on key flights, with one claiming, "I got 100 seats locked."

Tamanam experienced the impact firsthand. “It was hard for me to book a ticket and I paid a huge fare for the panic travel,” she told AFP after finally securing a one-way flight to Dallas on Qatar Airways for over $2,000 — more than double the cost of her original fare.

The trolls’ efforts caused widespread confusion and delays, with many Indian visa holders fearing being stranded overseas amid the uncertainty surrounding the new visa fee. Although the White House later clarified the fee was a one-time payment not affecting current holders, the panic had already set in.

Experts warn that this campaign exemplifies how online trolls can weaponise digital systems to create real-world disruption. Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told AFP: “The trolling was an attempt to cause panic among H-1B visa holders.”

Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, highlighted how nationalism fuels such attacks: "As nationalistic politics takes hold worldwide, an informal international association of opponents will use an array of aggressive tools, including the internet."

With India accounting for roughly three-quarters of the 85,000 H-1B visa recipients annually, the disruption disproportionately impacted a large community reliant on timely travel to the US for work.

Despite claims of site slowdowns, Air India confirmed their systems operated normally during the incident. Still, the trolling campaign’s scale and coordination exposed the vulnerabilities of digital booking systems to malicious manipulation, complicating an already tense situation for Indian visa holders like Amrutha Tamanam.

AFP