The first batch of Indian migrants deported from the US landed in the north Indian city of Amritsar on Wednesday, February 5. They had left San Antonio in Texas on Monday in a military C-17 aircraft.
Out of the total 205 migrants reported to be on board the C-17, 25 were women and 13 children. Most of the deported migrants originally came from the Indian states of Gujarat and Punjab. Government officials reportedly have said that only after all documents are verified, their citizenship is confirmed, and their “criminal records” are checked, the deportees would be allowed to leave the airport.
Trump’s deportation policy and its impact on Indian migrants
The deportation of Indians is part of president Donald Trump’s declared policy against undocumented migrants, which the right-wing calls “illegal immigrants.” During his election campaign Trump promised to carry out the “largest deportation in American history” terming the migrants as “aliens” and “criminals” and accusing them of “invading” the country.
The Trump administration has already carried out similar deportations to various Latin American countries. The full implementation of Trump’s declarations would allegedly affect nearly 11 million people who are considered to be undocumented migrants from different parts of the world and who have been living and working in the US for years.
According to a report in the Indian Express, there are over 20,000 Indians currently on the deportation list in the US with 2,467 of them kept in detention centers as per January 21.
However, according to various other estimates the actual number of Indians living in the US as undocumented migrants is much higher. The number could be anywhere between 200,000 and 750,000 which would make it the third largest undocumented migrant population from any country in the US after Mexico and El Salvador.
Indians facing deportation from the US also form the largest group among all Asian countries and fourth largest in the world, The Indian Express reported.
India fully cooperates with Trump’s mass deportation policy
India’s Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar, has said that his country is ready to take back all the so-called “illegal migrants” after due verification. He termed migration through “unlawful” sources bad for India’s reputation claiming it is “neither desirable nor beneficial.”
Although immigrants commit crime at far less rates than US-born citizens, Indian officials, as reported in media, have echoed Trump’s allegations that undocumented migration often breeds “unlawful activities” and crimes.
“We are very firmly opposed to illegal mobility and illegal migration. Because as you know that when something illegal happens, many other illegal activities get joined into it..this is not desirable,” Jaishankar said during his press conference after meeting with the US Secretary of State Mark Rubio last month.
Trump, after talking to India’s ultra right wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 27, claimed Modi will do what is right on the issue of deportations. Modi is also scheduled to visit the US later this month.
Social movements express outrage at the treatment of migrants
Meanwhile, several activists and opposition leaders in India took to social media to express their anger at the Indian government’s failures to protest the “humiliation” faced by Indian deportees after images of them being put in a military plane with their hands and legs cuffed emerged in Indian media on Tuesday.
One opposition leader, a minister in the provincial government in Punjab province, the home state of the largest number of deportees, called the deportation wrong. He claimed migrants have contributed to the US economy and demanded they should instead receive “permanent residency” there, Times of India reported.
The Indian government has not yet issued any formal statement on the arrival of the first set of migrants in Amritsar. The US embassy spokesperson in New Delhi described the move as “vigorously enforcing borders, tightening immigration laws and removing illegal immigrants.”
