In October, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) sent a chartered flight carrying Indian nationals back home, marking a growing trend in deportations to India.

This was no ordinary flight - it was one of multiple large-scale “removal flights” carried out this year, each typically carrying more than 100 passengers. The flights were returning groups of Indian migrants who "did not establish a legal basis to remain in the US".

According to US officials, the latest flight carrying adult men and women was routed to Punjab, close to many deportees' places of origin. No precise breakdown of hometowns was provided.

In the US fiscal year 2024 which ended in September, more than 1,000 Indian nationals had been repatriated by charter and commercial flights, according to Royce Bernstein Murray, assistant secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security.

“That has been part of a steady increase in removals from the US of Indian nationals over the past few years, which corresponds with a general increase in encounters that we have seen with Indian nationals in the last few years as well,” Ms Murray told a media briefing. (Encounters refer to instances where non-citizens are stopped by US authorities while attempting to cross the country’s borders with Mexico or Canada.)

Source: BBC