As many as 1,100 Indians, staying in the United States illegally, were deported through charter and commercial flights during the 2023-2024 financial year.
Recently, a chartered flight carrying deported Indians landed in India. US homeland authorities have announced the deportation of a batch of Indians staying in the country illegally.
According to a senior official in the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the charter flight was "de-planed in Punjab". However, she did not mention where exactly the flight had originated from or the place of the origin of these deportees.
In a virtual briefing, Royce Murray, Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy, US DHS, said about 1,100 Indian nationals were repatriated in the US financial year ending September 20 this year.
In response to another query, Murray said the repatriation in this fiscal period took place through a mix of charter and commercial flights.
"On October 22, the US Department of Homeland Security, through the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), conducted a large-frame charter removal flight to the Republic of India of Indian nationals who did not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States," the DHS had said in a statement on October 25.
In the fiscal year 2024, the DHS removed or returned over 1,60,000 individuals and operated more than 495 international repatriation flights to more than 145 countries, including India, the DHS statement said.
There has been a "steady increase" in deportations of illegal Indian migrants from the US in recent years, said Murray.
“We are continuing to strengthen our working relationship with the government of India across a range of issues and welcome the partnership that we have had and know we will continue to have so that we can better address the challenges [such as] the use of human smugglers or unscrupulous travel agencies that are preying on vulnerable migrants and providing them with false information,” she said.