US sends back illegal Indian migrants in military aircraft | India News
NEW DELHI: In the first such operation of its kind involving India since the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the US despatched a C17 military aircraft carrying an unspecified number of illegal Indian migrants to India. Anonymous US officials were quoted as saying dozens had been deported, and unconfirmed reports put the number of deportees north of 200, but there was no confirmation about the same by either country.
In fact, there was no official acknowledgement at all of the flight by Indian authorities till late in the evening. The American embassy here, without sharing any details about the flight, said the US is vigorously enforcing its border, tightening immigration laws, and removing illegal migrants. “These actions send a clear message: illegal migration is not worth the risk,” said the spokesperson.
Official sources here said India’s position on illegal migration had not changed and it will continue to accept those who illegally entered the US, after verifying their Indian origin. The people who are returning, all verified Indian nationals, are among the thousands of Indians identified for deportation under the Biden administration.
An early morning report by Reuters from Washington said the C-17 aircraft had departed for India with migrants aboard but would not arrive for at least 24 hours. The Punjab government was preparing for its landing in Amritsar on Wednesday morning. The Indian government did not confirm if the plane was going to land there but American journalists quoted US officials as saying that the aircraft was on its way to the Indian border city after a stop in Guam.
The development also comes days ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s visit to the US for his first bilateral meeting with Trump since the latter’s inauguration on January 20. Trump had raised the issue of illegal migration with Modi and later said the India PM would do what’s right on the issue.
While India has been accepting illegal migrants from the US for years, including under the first Trump administration, it has rarely, if ever, used a military aircraft to deport Indian nationals to India. The last time US authorities deported a significant number of illegals to India was in October last year but that was carried out through a large frame charter flight. Colombia recently turned away 2 US military deportation aircraft, saying the US was treating its nationals like criminals, but quickly backed down after Trump threatened to retaliate with punitive trade tariffs.
While India is unlikely to be as sensitive as some of the Leftist Latin American leaders about receiving citizens in a military aircraft from the US, a country it has robust defence cooperation with, the Indian government will closely follow how Indian nationals returning are handled by American authorities in deportation flights. This is also the farthest that a US deportation plane has travelled since Trump’s return as such flights were limited till now to central and South American countries. Many of these illegal migrants were reported to have landed in their respective countries in handcuffs. While Mexico has insisted on accepting its citizens only in civilian planes, Brazil complained about “flagrant disregard’’ of human rights in US deportation flights.
A New York Times report on January 3, quoting defence officials, said military planes have rarely been used in the past by the US for deportation. Most deportations in the past couple of weeks have been through nonmilitary planes and only 6 military flights have been used for the same till the end of Trump’s second week in office. Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador and Peru are the only countries to have received military flights till the end of the last week.