US military plane carrying 104 deported Indians landed in Punjab
The flight, which took off from Texas on Tuesday, also carried 11 crew members and 45 US officials overseeing the deportation process.
NEW DELHI– A US military aircraft carrying the first batch of 104 illegal Indian immigrants, with the highest number of 33 each from Haryana and Gujarat, reached Amritsar in Punjab on Wednesday. A total of 30 deportees were residents of Punjab. The US military C-17 aircraft landed at Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport amid tight security.
Three each from Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra while two from Chandigarh. The deportees include 25 women and 12 minors, with the youngest passenger being just four years old. Forty-eight people are below the age of 25.
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The flight, which took off from Texas on Tuesday, also carried 11 crew members and 45 US officials overseeing the deportation process.
A senior Punjab official said that most deportees from the state belong to Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Jalandhar, Nawanshahr, Patiala, Mohali and Sangrur.
Some of them had entered the US illegally, while others overstayed their visas. They were deported on the C-17 plane that took off from San Antonio, Texas.
Six of the 30 Punjabi migrants including a 10-year-old boy deported from the US on Wednesday. They belong to Bholath sub division of Kapurthala district in the NRI belt of Doaba.
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Doaba accounts for 14 deportees with six belonging to Kapurthala district, four from Jalandhar and two each from Hoshiarpur and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar.
They were brought back by the US Air Force plane with 104 Indian migrants that landed in Amritsar on Wednesday afternoon.
Reuters reported that the C-17 aircraft carrying 205 Indian nationals departed from San Antonio, Texas. Sources said the passengers include those from Gujarat, Punjab, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
Thousands of undocumented migrants have been arrested since US President Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration.
Bholath Congress MLA Sukhpal Khaira admitted the action taken by the US authorities to expel undocumented migrants was according to law but was “a highly condemnable move”.
I severely condemn the insensitive attitude of @BhagwantMann being head of Punjab for not receiving scores of Punjabi’s deported by USA President @realDonaldTrump today or speaking a word about their pitiable plight.
This mass deportation trashes the false claims of… pic.twitter.com/mWrWu9sfuu
— Sukhpal Singh Khaira (@SukhpalKhaira) February 5, 2025
According to media report, A Jalandhar-based travel agent claimed that most of the deportees were asylum-seekers who would have moved to the US recently through “donkey routes”.
The Congress claimed on Wednesday that Indians being deported from the US were “handcuffed and humiliated”.
Pawan Khera, chairman of the Congress party’s media and publicity department, said, “Looking at the pictures of Indians getting handcuffed and humiliated while being deported from the US saddens me as an Indian.”
Congress’s deputy leader in Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi also protested against “the manner in which the United States government has sent Indians back to our country”. “The way they are being chained is demeaning and dehumanising. I cannot understand why Prime Minister Modi is silent on the way Indians are being treated by the Trump administration,” Gogoi said in a post on X.
Meanwhile, This is the first batch of illegal immigrants from India to be deported since Donald Trump’s return to office.
