An American expulsion flight carrying Indian nationals accused of having entered the country illegally should arrive in the state of Punjab.
The American military plane carrying the deportees left Texas late Tuesday. He heads for the city of Amritsar where the authorities say they have implemented measures to deal with them.
President Donald Trump has made the mass expulsion of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The United States would have identified around 18,000 Indian nationals who, according to them, have entered illegally.
Trump said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country “would do what is good” by accepting American deportations.
Punjab authorities say they have created special meters to receive deportees, adding that individuals would be treated in a “friendly” manner.
Journalists began to come together outside the police barricades near an Indian Air Force building in Amritsar.
The plane with 104 deportees on board should land at 1:00 p.m. local time (07: 30 GMT). They will be treated separately from regular passengers before boarding the buses to their original states, including Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.
Trump is increasingly using American military planes to make individuals in their country of origin.
However, expulsion flights to India are not new. During the year 2024 of the United States, which ended in September, more than 1,000 Indian nationals had been repatriated by charter and commercial flights.
In October, American immigration and customs application (ICE) expelled more than 100 Indian nationals who had no legal ground to stay in the United States on an chartered flight, being a trend in increase in moves in India.
This flight carrying adult men and women was also sent to Punjab, near many places of origin of the deportees. No precise ventilation of natal cities has been provided.
A large part of the migration from India to us seems to come from the state dominated by the sikhs of Punjab and the neighboring Haryana, which has traditionally seen people migrate abroad. The other source of origin is Gujarat, the original state of Modi.
“This is part of a constant increase in the US movements of the Indian nationals in recent years, which corresponds to a general increase in the meetings that we have seen with Indian nationals in recent years”, Royce Bernstein Murray, the deputy secretary of the American Department of Internal Security, said at a press conference in October.
Meetings refer to cases where non-citizens are arrested by the American authorities while trying to cross the country’s borders with Mexico or Canada.
A total of 5,477 Indians were expelled from the United States by ice between 2018 and 2023, according to official figures. More than 2,300 have been expelled in 2020, the highest in recent years.
The number of undeniable undenial immigrants in the United States is disputed.
The new data from the Pew Research Center estimated 725,000 people in 2022, making it the third group after Mexico and Salvador.
On the other hand, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) puts the figure at 375,000, classifying India fifth among the countries of origin. Unauthorized immigrants represent 3% of the American population and 22% of the population born abroad.
In November, 1.44 million non-citizens in the United States remain in the “unteaded file of the ICE with final dismissal orders”, according to an ICE document, accessible by Fox News.
The highest number comes from Honduras, Guatemala, Salvador and Mexico, each with more than 200,000 people awaiting deportation.
China has 37,908 cases, while India has 17,940 on the list.
Document ICE indicates that the US government expects the foreign nations to accept their citizens but face resistance.
Ice currently classifies 15 countries as “not very cooperative”, notably China, India, Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Eleven others, like Iraq, Nicaragua and Vietnam, are considered to be at risk of non-compliance.
“The factors which could lead to a classified country as non -cooperative include the intention of the efforts to return the ICE by refusing to conduct consular interviews if necessary; refusing to accept the executable final order for withdrawal;
The spokesman for the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Randir Jaiswal, recently said that India was “firmly opposed to illegal migration, especially since it is linked to other forms of organized crime”.
“As part of migration in India and in American mobility cooperation, the two parties are engaged in a process to dissuade illegal migration, while creating more ways for the legal migration of India to the United States. We want to continue this cooperation.
“At the same time, the government of India should make the required verification, including the nationality of the persons concerned before being expelled to India.”
Last year, under former American president Joe Biden, 271,000 migrants were expelled to 192 countries.