By Suhasini Raj
A U.S. military plane with at least 100 migrants aboard landed in India on Wednesday, officials said, the longest such deportation flight since President Donald Trump took office and a sign that countries with leaders he favors will not be spared his immigration crackdown.
It appeared to be the first use of a U.S. military aircraft to deport people to India, which is one of the top sources of unauthorized immigration to the United States. More than 1,000 Indians were sent back to the country last year on commercial flights.
The U.S. Department of Defense confirmed on Wednesday that an Air Force C-17 plane landed around 3:30 a.m. Eastern Time in Amritsar, India.
Officials in the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who enjoys a close relationship with Trump, have expressed confidence that India is better positioned than most countries to deal with the Trump administration, and they have publicly expressed a willingness to accept deportees.
But Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, a minister in the state government of Punjab, where the plane landed on Wednesday, criticized Trump’s tough stance on illegal immigration and suggested that Modi’s government should do more to resist him.
“The Indian federal government must take this very seriously,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “After all, there are people from many Indian states who have been deported. And what is their crime? They may have gone illegally, but it was for their livelihoods. I am greatly disheartened. President Trump must give these people another chance and, on humanitarian grounds, do a rethink of his decision.”
Dhaliwal said that he would be at the airport to receive the deportees and ensure that they were not treated as criminals.
The Pew Research Center estimated in 2022 that more than 700,000 Indian immigrants were living illegally in the United States, more than from any country but Mexico and El Salvador. Recent reports in Indian news media said that just under 20,000 migrants were scheduled for imminent deportation.
Indians are among the migrants from around the world who have illegally entered the United States through Mexico in growing numbers in recent years. Last year, more than 25,000 Indians were arrested while trying to cross the southern border illegally, according to U.S. government data. Indian migrants also contributed to rising numbers of arrests at the northern border with Canada last year.
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