By Miracle Ogunde
A day after a US military airplane flew back 104 migrants as part of President Donald Trump’s overhaul of immigration, India’s foreign minister threatened a “strong crackdown” on illegal migration.
Thousands of unregistered migrants have been arrested across the United States since Trump’s inauguration on January 20, AFP reports.
This follows Trump’s flurry of executive actions aimed at overhauling immigration to the United States is estimated to impact 11 million undocumented migrants.
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told parliament on Thursday that: “It is the obligation of all countries to take back their nationals if they are found to be living illegally abroad,”
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.
Jaishankar said: New Delhi was “engaging the US government to ensure that the returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight.”
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.
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