United States President Donald Trump has started acting on the promises he made during his election campaign – with a mass deportation of illegal immigrants to different countries, including India, currently underway. On Tuesday, a US military plane began deporting Indian migrants, implementing Trump’s hardline stance against an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in America.
“When I am reelected, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history,” Trump had said during his campaign trail.
A C-17 aircraft carrying 205 Indian nationals departed from San Antonio, Texas departed around 3 am IST, sources said. The plane, headed to Punjab’s Amritsar, is likely to stop at Ramstein, Germany, for refuelling. Sources said each one was verified before being sent back.
This deportation is likely the first of several planned flights, as more batches of illegal Indian immigrants are expected to be flown back in the coming weeks.
While the US Embassy declined to confirm the development, a spokesperson said that the United States was vigorously enforcing its border, tightening immigration laws, and removing illegal migrants.
“These actions send a clear message: illegal migration is not worth the risk,” the spokesperson said.
WHO IS BEING DEPORTED?
The Trump administration is targeting undocumented or illegal migrants in the country. According to the New York Times, military planes to Latin America so far have carried people apprehended under the previous Joe Biden administration.
The Trump administration has employed both commercial flights and military aircraft for its latest spate of deportations.
The Pentagon said over 5,000 migrants from El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California will be deported. So far, military aircraft have flown migrants to Guatemala, Peru and Honduras.
HOW MANY INDIANS WILL BE IMPACTED?
This large-scale deportation underscores the U.S. government’s firm stance on border enforcement and is expected to impact thousands of Indian nationals residing illegally in the country.
Bloomberg News reported that India and the US have identified 18,000 Indian migrants who are in the US illegally.
At least 20,407 undocumented Indians could be affected by the move. Of these, 17,940 are paperless individuals with final removal orders, according to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 2,467 others are currently in detention under the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These figures were last updated in 2022 and the number could be way higher.
Approximately 725,000 illegal immigrants from India live in the US, making it the third-largest population of unauthorised immigrants after Mexico and El Salvador, according to data from the Pew Research Centre.
WILL INDIA TAKE THEM BACK?
Last month, India said it has always been open to the legitimate return of undocumented Indians to their country when asked about deportation plans from the US.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had said that India was verifying who from the US can be deported to India, and the number of such individuals cannot yet be determined.
“With every country, and the US is no exception, we have always maintained that if any of our citizens are there illegally, and if we are sure that they are our citizens, we have always been open to their legitimate return to India,” EAM Jaishankar said.
After a call with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, the US President said that the Indian PM “will do what’s right” when it comes to taking back illegal Indian immigrants from America.
TRUMP’S ANTI-IMMIGRANT EFFORTS
Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric was key to his campaign in the run-up to the US elections in 2024. When he took office in January, he reiterated that all illegal immigrants will be sent back.
“All illegal entry will be immediately halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of illegal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said during his inauguration speech.
The Trump administration has also shut down the CBP One mobile application under the Customs and Border Patrol agency that allowed migrants to schedule appointments at border entry points.
Trump also ended birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants, and has dismantled refugee programs.
On January 29, Trump announced that they would build a migrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, infamous for housing terrorism suspects after the 9/11 terror attack. The facility is expected to house as many as 30,000 migrants. The US military has also offered to use the Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado to detain migrants.
