Trump begins deporting Indian migrants, military flight leaves country: Report
A United States military flight carrying illegal migrants departed for India on Monday as the Donald Trump administration intensifies its crackdown on undocumented immigrants, an official stated, according to news agency Reuters.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the C-17 aircraft had departed for India with migrants aboard but would not arrive for at least 24 hours.
Trump had pledged to carry out the largest deportation in American history, and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has compiled an initial list of nearly 18,000 undocumented Indian nationals, among 1.5 million individuals marked for deportation. However, it was not immediately clear how many were aboard the departing flight.
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.
Last month, New Delhi said that India 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,” Jaishankar said.
President Trump said in January that Prime Minister Narendra Modi “will do what’s right” when it came to taking back Indian immigrants who arrived in the US illegally. These remarks came after a phone call between the two leaders, who discussed a host of issues.
The Pentagon has also started providing flights to deport more than 5,000 immigrants held by US authorities in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California. So far, military aircraft have flown migrants to Guatemala, Peru and Honduras.
