Amritsar:
A US navy plane carrying first batch of 104 unlawful Indian immigrants, with the very best variety of 30 every had been from Haryana and Gujarat, reached Amritsar in Punjab on Wednesday.
A complete of 30 deportees had been residents of Punjab. The US navy C-17 plane landed at Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee Worldwide Airport amid tight safety.
Two folks every had been from Uttar Pradesh and Chandigarh, whereas three from Maharashtra. The deportees embrace 25 ladies and 12 minors, with the youngest passenger being simply 4 years previous.
Forty-eight individuals are under the age of 25. The flight, which took off from Texas on Tuesday, additionally carried 11 crew members and 45 US officers overseeing the deportation course of.
A senior Punjab official stated that almost all deportees from the state belong to Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Jalandhar, Nawanshahr, Patiala, Mohali and Sangrur. A few of them had entered the US illegally, whereas others overstayed their visas.
They had been deported on the C-17 airplane that took off from San Antonio, Texas. This was the primary spherical of deportation of unlawful immigrants that coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s go to to Washington subsequent week.
This might be PM Modi’s first go to after Donald Trump took over as US President for the second time. Exterior Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar had earlier stated that New Delhi is open to the “reliable return” of Indian nationals residing illegally overseas, together with within the US.
India has expressed readiness to just accept these migrants, post-verification, EAM Jaishankar conveyed this to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio final month.
“For the primary time in historical past, we’re finding and loading unlawful aliens into navy plane and flying them again to the locations from which they got here,” President Trump informed reporters final month.
Punjab NRI Affairs Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal has expressed disappointment over the US determination to deport the Indians, saying they’ve contributed to the US economic system and may have been granted everlasting residency, as an alternative of being deported.
Roughly 7,25,000 unlawful immigrants from India dwell within the US, making it the third-largest inhabitants of unauthorised immigrants after Mexico and El Salvador, in accordance with information from the Pew Analysis Centre.
Many individuals from Punjab, who are actually dealing with deportation, had entered the US by means of the “donkey route” or different unlawful means by spending lakhs of rupees. The US administration has launched a crackdown in opposition to unlawful immigrants after Trump turned the President.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
