Nueva Delhi: in the first operation of this type that involves India from the return of Donald Trump to the White House, the United States sent a C17 military plane carrying an un specified number of illegal Indian migrants To India. Anonymous American officials were summoned saying that dozens had been deported, and the unconfirmed reports put the number of deportees north of 200, but there was no confirmation about the same for any of the countries.
In fact, there was no official recognition in the entire flight by the Indian authorities late at night. The American embassy here, without sharing any detail on the flight, said that the United States is vigorously enforcing its border, hardening immigration laws and eliminating illegal migrants. “These actions send a clear message: illegal migration is not worth the risk,” said the spokesman.
The official sources here said that India’s position on illegal migration had not changed and will continue to accept those who illegally entered the United States, after verifying their Indian origin. People who return, all verified Indian citizens are among the thousands of Indians identified for deportation under the Biden administration.
An early report in the Washington Reuters morning said the C-17 plane had gone to India with migrants on board, but would not arrive for at least 24 hours. The Punjab government was preparing for landing at Amritsar on Wednesday morning. The Indian government did not confirm whether the plane was going to land there, but American journalists summoned US officials saying that the plane was heading to the Indian border city after a stop in Guam.
The development also arrives days before the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United States for its first bilateral meeting with Trump since the inauguration of the latter on January 20. Trump had raised the issue of illegal migration with Modi and then said that the Prime Minister of India would do the right thing about the problem.
While India has been accepting illegal migrants from the United States for years, even under the first Trump administration, it has rarely used, if you have ever used a military plane to deport Indian citizens to India. The last time the US authorities deported a significant number of illegal to India was in October last year, but that was carried out through a large -painting charter flight. Colombia recently rejected 2 US military deportation planes, saying that the United States was treating its nationals as criminals, but quickly backed away after Trump threatened to retaliate with punitive commercial tariffs.
While India is unlikely to be as sensitive as some of the Latin American leaders of the leftists about receiving citizens in a military plane in the United States, a country with which it has a solid defense cooperation, the Indian government will closely follow how Indian citizens are managed by Americans authorities on deportation flights. This is also the furthest that has traveled an American deportation plane since Trump’s return, since such flights were limited so far to the countries of Central and South American America. It was reported that many of these illegal migrants had landed in their respective handcuffs. While Mexico has insisted on accepting its citizens only in civil planes, Brazil complained about the “flagrant contempt” of human rights in deportation flights of the United States.
A New York Times report on January 3, citing defense officials, said that military planes have rarely been used in the past by the United States for deportation. Most deportations in the last two weeks have gone through non -military planes and only 6 military flights have been used until the end of Trump’s second week in office. Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador and Peru are the only countries that have received military flights until the end of the last week.