A US deportation flight carrying about 100 Indian nationals accused of entering the country illegally has landed in the state of Punjab.
The military aircraft, which left Texas late on Tuesday, is now in the city of Amritsar where authorities say they have put measures in place to process the deportees.
President Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.
Trump has said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what’s right” in accepting US deportations.
Authorities in Punjab say they have set up special counters to receive the deportees, adding the individuals would be treated in a “friendly” manner.
Journalists have gathered outside police barricades near an Indian Air Force building in Amritsar.
There are 104 Indian deportees on the flight and they will be processed separately from regular passengers before boarding buses to their home states, including Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.
Trump is increasingly using US military planes to return individuals to their home countries.
However, deportation flights to India are not new. In the US fiscal year 2024, which ended in September, more than 1,000 Indian nationals had been repatriated by charter and commercial flights.
A total of 5,477 Indians have been deported from the US by ICE between 2018 and 2023, according to official figures. More than 2,300 were deported in 2020, the highest in recent years.
Credit: bbc.com
