Videos of US cops pinning down Indian man at airport go viral; India's consulate swings into action

New Delhi: The Consulate General of India in New York got in touch with local authorities after a video posted on X showed the United States law enforcement officers handcuffing and pinning down a citizen of India on the floor at the airport at Newark Liberty International Airport, apparently before deporting him.

“We have come across social media posts claiming that an Indian national is facing difficulties at Newark Liberty International Airport. We are in touch with local authorities in this regard,” the Consulate General of India in New York posted on X.

“I witnessed a young Indian student being deported from Newark Airport last night— handcuffed, crying, treated like a criminal. He came chasing dreams, not causing harm. As an NRI, I felt helpless and heartbroken. This is a human tragedy,” Kunal Jain, an Indian American social entrepreneur, posted on X.

Jain posted several pictures and videos of the incident. He wrote that the young Indian, who was being pinned down, had been crying and telling others that the US law enforcement officers were trying to prove him to be mentally deranged, although he was not.

"This poor kid’s parents won’t know what’s happening to him."

“He was to be boarded last night on the same flight with me, but he never got boarded. Someone needs to find out what’s going on with him. I found him disoriented.” Jain posted on X, tagging the Embassy of India in the US and drawing the attention of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

The US had deported 332 illegal migrants to India aboard military aircraft on February 5, 15, and 16 – just a few weeks after Donald Trump’s return to the White House as the 47th American president.

Soon after the first US military aircraft had landed in Amritsar on February 5 with 104 Indian illegal migrants from America, the allegedly inhumane way in which the Trump administration had sent them back had triggered uproar in India.

The deportees had alleged that they had been made to travel aboard the military aircraft for over 40 hours with their hands manacled and legs shackled. They had been unrestrained only during toilet breaks, which required long waits in the queue as they had access to only one of the lavatories on the aircraft. New Delhi had strongly registered its “concerns with the US authorities on the treatment meted out to deportees on the flight that landed on February 5, particularly with respect to the use of shackles, especially on women”.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) late last year revealed that while nearly 1.4 million illegal immigrants in America had been served final removal orders, about 17,940 of them had been citizens of India.

The Pew Research Centre estimated that nearly 7,25,000 Indians had been illegally staying in the US in 2021 – the third such community of undocumented migrants after the Mexicans (4.1 million) and Salvadorans (800,000). As of 2021, the 10.5 million unauthorised immigrants in the United States represented about 3 per cent of the country’s total population.

The number of illegal immigrants from India encountered by the American authorities on the US borders grew from 8,027 between September 2018 and October 2019 to 96,917 during the corresponding period in 2022-23.

A total of 519 Indians were deported from America between November 2023 and October 2024 through commercial and chartered flights, the Ministry of External Affairs informed the Lok Sabha last month, quoting the US government data.

“The Consulate remains ever committed to the welfare of Indian Nationals," the CGI in New York posted on X on Monday.