A US military plane carrying 104 deported people has landed in India as part of the Trump administration’s policy of deploying the armed forces to enforce its trumpeted mass-deportation programme, Report informs via The Guardian.
The passengers, the first deportees to be flown to India by the military, were sent on a C-17 aircraft from San Antonio, Texas, to the northern Indian city of Amritsar.
The expulsion came ahead of an anticipated visit to Washington next week by the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, who has previously praised Trump and been lavished in turn with warm words from the US president.
The pair are reported to have discussed immigration in a phone call last week.
Data from the Pew Research Center suggests there are about 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US, making them the third largest group after Mexicans and Salvadorians, although the figures are disputed. The Migration Policy Institute has estimated the number of undocumented Indian immigrants at roughly half that number.
Although more than 1,000 Indians were deported back last year on commercial flights, the use of much more expensive military planes has symbolic importance by raising the profile and visibility of the expulsions.
Reuters has calculated that using military rather than chartered commercial planes for deportations can cost five times more per person.
Trump highlighted the importance of military flights in recent remarks to congressional Republicans. “For the first time in history, we are locating and loading illegal aliens into military aircraft and flying them back to the places from which they came,” he said. “We’re respected again, after years of laughing at us like we’re stupid people.”
Military aircraft have already been used for deportation flights to Guatemala, Peru, Honduras and Ecuador. The practice provoked a row last month with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, who refused to let two military planes land after saying his country’s citizens were not being deported in a dignified manner, amid images of some in handcuffs. The matter was swiftly resolved after Trump threatened to impose tariffs and Petro dispatched two Colombian airforce planes to the US to fly the deportees back to Colombia.
