A U.S. deportation flight carrying Indian nationals accused of entering the U.S. illegally landed in the northern state of Punjab Wednesday – the first such flight to India since the Trump administration launched a crackdown on illegal immigrants.
The military aircraft, which landed amid tight security, brought 104 deportees, according to media reports. Authorities did not confirm the number, but said the deportees will be received in a friendly manner.
New Delhi, which does not want to make illegal immigration a contentious issue with Washington, has said that it is open to the return of undocumented Indians in the United States if their nationality is verified.
President Donald Trump said last week that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would “do what’s right” in taking back illegal immigrants. His comment came following a phone conversation with Modi.
In New Delhi, foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a media briefing on Friday that India and the United States are engaged in a process to deter illegal migration and “cooperation between India and the U.S. is strong and effective in this domain. This will be evident in times to come.”
Trade and migration are expected to be key issues during a meeting that could take place next week between Trump and Modi.
“India does not want to focus on the issue of illegal migrants being deported. We know it is big business in India, sending migrants illegally. Instead, the government’s interest is in ensuring that legal migration channels to the U.S. for Indian nationals are not restricted by the Trump administration,” according to Manoj Joshi, Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
Those legal routes are H-1B visas for skilled workers and visas for students.
“Both sides are engaged in a process to deter illegal migration, while also creating more avenues for legal migration from India to the U.S.,” Jaiswal has said.
The number of Indian migrants attempting to enter the U.S. unlawfully has grown in recent years, with India now accounting for the largest number of illegal immigrants to the United States from Asian countries, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
Their overall numbers, however, are still small; Indians account for only about 3 percent of illegal crossings.
The United States has identified some 18,000 undocumented Indian migrants to be sent back home, according to a Bloomberg report last week.
Deportation flights to India are not new — between October 2023 and September 2024, more than 1,000 Indian nationals were repatriated, but Wednesday’s flight was the first time that they were sent back via military aircraft.
The deportation flight was routed to Amritsar city in Punjab, which is among the three states where much of the illegal migration from India to the U.S. originates. The others are Haryana in the north and the western state of Gujarat.
Hours before the flight landed, Punjab’s minister for NRI (Non-Resident Indians) Affairs, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, urged people in the state to avoid illegal migration and instead focus on acquiring skills and education to access global opportunities through legal channels.
