US Deports Second & Third Batch of Indians to Amritsar

On 15–16 Feb, the second and third US military C-17 Globemaster aircrafts carrying Indian deportees landed at Amritsar’s Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport. The total deportees in these two flights included individuals from Panjab (98) Haryana (77), Gujarat (42), Uttar Pradesh (5), Goa (2), Maharashtra (2), Rajasthan (2), Himachal Pradesh (2), Uttarakhand (1) and Jammu & Kashmir (1). The deportees were shackled and handcuffed during the journey. Sikh deportees were forced to remove their turbans. The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) condemned the US authorities for violating Sikh religious sentiments. Panjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann criticized the Union government for choosing Amritsar as the landing site, accusing it of defaming Panjab and Panjabis. He argued that illegal immigration is a national issue, not exclusive to Panjab, and urged the Union government to divert flights to the national capital New Delhi. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) responded that flights were landing in Amritsar because it is the nearest airport. This is wrong because the flight path shows the aircraft bringing back the deportees flying over Gujarat to reach Panjab. The irony is Indian authorities do not consider Amritsar as a port of arrival or destination to the US, allow no civil flights from or to US from the airport, causing significant inconvenience to people from Panjab who need to go to Delhi when they travel to or from the US. BJP criticized Panjab for carrying interviews with those deported and claimed no one from Gujarat has spoken. This betrays the BJP’s dictatorial tendency to suppress negative news. Recently, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met US President Donald Trump and emphasized the need to dismantle the ecosystem of human trafficking, expressing India’s willingness to take back its nationals living illegally abroad. However, he did not say a word on how the US was mistreating and humiliating these deportees.