A US deportation flight carrying Indian nationals accused of illegally entering the US arrived at Punjab’s Amritsar airport on Wednesday.
The military aircraft, which landed amid tight security, brought 104 deportees, according to media reports. Officials did not confirm the number, but said the deportees would be welcomed in a friendly manner.
New Delhi, which does not want to make illegal immigration a contentious issue with Washington, has said it is open to the return of undocumented Indians to the United States if their nationality is confirmed.
President Donald Trump said last week that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what is right” in taking back illegal immigrants. In New Delhi, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a media briefing on Friday that India and the US are engaged in a process to curb illegal migration and that “cooperation between India and the US in this area is strong and effective. This will become clear in the coming time.”
Trade and migration are expected to be the main issues during the meeting between Trump and Modi next week.
“The Indian government does not want to focus on the issue of deportation of illegal immigrants. Because it is also raising the issue of migration during the talks next week. According to Manoj Joshi, Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, we know that this decision of the Trump administration is going to create tension in the Indo-US relations. But the Indian government is still in the process of ensuring that the Trump administration does not restrict legal immigration channels for Indian citizens to the US,”
On the other hand, the US is granting H-1B visas for skilled workers and visas for students through legal channels. The number of Indian immigrants trying to enter the US illegally has increased in recent years, with India now accounting for the largest number of illegal immigrants from Asian countries entering the US, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. However, their total number is still small; only 3 percent of illegal crossings are Indians.
According to a Bloomberg report last week, the US has identified about 18,000 undocumented Indian immigrants who are to be deported. Deportation flights are nothing new to India – between October 2023 and September 2024, more than 1,000 Indian nationals were deported, but Wednesday’s flight was the first to be repatriated by military aircraft.
The deportation flight was headed to the city of Amritsar in Punjab, one of the three states from which most illegal migration from India to the US originates. The others are Haryana in the north and the western state of Gujarat.
Hours before the flight landed, Punjab’s NRI Affairs Minister, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, urged the people of the state to focus on acquiring skills and education to avoid illegal migration and access global opportunities through legal channels.
