India vows migrant ‘crackdown’ after US deportation flight

NEW DELHI: India´s foreign minister threatened a “strong crackdown” on illegal migration on Thursday, a day after a US military airplane flew back 104 migrants as part of President Donald Trump´s overhaul of immigration.

Thousands of unregistered migrants have been arrested across the United States since Trump´s inauguration on January 20. Trump´s flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling immigration to the United States is estimated to impact 11 million undocumented migrants.

“It is the obligation of all countries to take back their nationals if they are found to be living illegally abroad,” Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told parliament.

Chief of the US Border Patrol Michael W. Banks said the return of “illegal aliens to India” marked “the farthest deportation flight yet using military transport”.

Banks included in social media post on Wednesday a video showing a shuffling line of shackled migrants boarding military aircraft.

New Delhi was “engaging the US government to ensure that the returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight”, Jaishankar said.

But he noted the “process of deportation is not a new one”, and that the United States had expelled more than 15,000 Indians since 2009, almost half of them between 2019-2024. “Our focus should be on crackdown -- strong crackdown -- on the illegal migration industry, while taking steps to ease visas for the legitimate traveller,” Jaishankar said.

India is the world´s fifth-largest economy and enjoys world-beating GDP growth, but hundreds of thousands of its citizens still leave the country each year seeking better opportunities abroad.

While its diaspora spans the globe, the United States remains the destination of choice. New Delhi is pressing for a more liberal US visa regime for India´s highly skilled pool of engineers, doctors, and other experts.

Meanwhile, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Thursday intensified his criticism of PM Narendra Modi’s government, highlighting claims that the Indian illegal immigrants deported by the US on a military plane were ‘handcuffed’.

Sharing a video of one of the deportees, Rahul Gandhi quoted him as saying, “For 40 hours, we were handcuffed, our feet tied with chains and we were not allowed to move an inch from our seats.”“Prime Minister, listen to this man’s pain. Indians deserve dignity and humanity, not handcuffs,” Rahul Gandhi added.