Security personnel stand guard at Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport before the arrival of Indian immigrants who were deported from US, in Amritsar on February 16, 2025.
| Photo Credit: ANI
A United States aircraft carrying around 112 undocumented Indian immigrants, deported from the U.S. landed at Punjab’s Amritsar International Airport on Sunday night (February 16, 2025), even as Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann urged the youth of Punjab to learn lessons from the deportation of illegal migrants, appealing to them to shun the idea of going abroad by wrong means.
The deportations follow President Donald Trump’s recent crackdown on illegal immigrants, and the latest group of Indian citizens was the third one to be sent back from the U.S. Earlier, on February 5, a U.S. military plane brought 104 illegal immigrants, and on February 15, as many as 116 people were deported.
After the first batch of deportees arrived, the Opposition had questioned the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government at the Centre on why the migrants had been “deported in shackles”. The deportees in the second group asserted that they were also “handcuffed and their legs chained” during the journey. Sources said the women on the flight were not handcuffed or chained on the second flight, unlike the first deportation flight from the U.S. to Amritsar.
According to officials, of the 112 deportees in the third group, 31 were from Punjab, 44 from Haryana, 33 from Gujarat, two from Uttar Pradesh and one each from Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
In Ludhiana district’s Ghungrali, addressing a gathering, Mr. Mann said owing to the failure of the successive governments in the State, the youth were forced to migrate to other countries in search of green pastures. He said that the mass deportation from the U.S. is an eye-opener for all of us and now we should not move abroad illegally but rather work hard for the socio-economic growth of the State.
Published – February 16, 2025 10:32 pm IST
