US plane carrying 104 deported Indians lands in Amritsar

Earlier reports claimed that US military plane C-17 was carrying 205 illegal immigrants.

New Delhi: With New Delhi and Washington DC preparing for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with President Donald Trump, a United States military aircraft with over 100 illegal immigrants from different states of India landed in Amritsar on Wednesday.

New Delhi refrained from officially commenting on the deportation from the US, apparently to prevent it from casting a shadow over Modi’s visit to Washington DC and his meeting with Trump. The Prime Minister will be visiting Washington DC from February 12 to 14. The US president is likely to host a dinner for him at the White House. The two leaders will also lead delegations of both governments in formal talks.

The C-17 aircraft of the US Air Force landed at Sri Guru Ram Das Ji International Airport in the afternoon. The aircraft had departed from a military airbase in Texas early on Tuesday. The aircraft had 104 Indians onboard as they “failed to establish the legal basis to continue their stay” in the US. The deportees included 33 each from Gujarat and Haryana, 30 from Punjab, three each from Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh and two from Chandigarh. The Punjab Police and officials of the central security agencies escorted them out of the airport. Nineteen women and 13 children were among the deportees.

It was earlier reported that the US military aircraft had departed for India with 205 deportees. But, after the aircraft landed with 104 deportees on Wednesday, a source in New Delhi said that nearly 100 more illegal immigrants would be flown back from the US to India soon. Over 2,300 more illegal immigrants suspected to be citizens of India are held in detention centres in the US as they exhausted all legal options to avoid their deportation. They will, however, be deported only after India’s missions in the US confirm their nationality, the source told DH on Wednesday.

This was the first deportation of illegal immigrants from the US to India after Trump returned to the White House on January 20. The US had last deported Indian illegal immigrants on October 22, 2024, albeit on a chartered aircraft. The Trump Administration started using military aircraft to deport people staying in the US unlawfully to signal its tough stand against illegal immigration and its commitment to ensure their speedy deportation.

“Modi ji calls Trump his friend. I request PM Modi ji to speak to Trump to find a solution to this issue,” Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, the NRI affairs minister of Punjab, told journalists after the arrival of the US military aircraft with the deportees in Amritsar.

New Delhi already signalled that it would not let the issue of illegal immigration from India to the US cast a shadow on its relations with Washington DC.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar conveyed to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a meeting on January 20 that New Delhi was very firmly opposed to illegal mobility and illegal immigration, and it had always been open to the legitimate return of illegal immigrants who would be confirmed to be genuine citizens of India.

“Looking at the pictures of Indians getting handcuffed and humiliated while being deported from the US saddens me as an Indian,” Pawan Khera, the chairman of the media and publicity department of the Congress, posted on X, drawing a comparison between the Modi government’s response to the deportation by the Trump Administration with that of the then Congress-led government led by Manmohan Singh to the harassment of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade in the US in December 2013.

“This is not the first deportation and won't be the last, even before Trump came, during (Joe) Biden’s regime...there were already 1100 Indians sent back from America,” Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP from Kerala, said.