New Delhi: India is against illegal immigration and will take back those deported from the US provided their nationality has been verified, the Ministry of External Affairs said Friday, in the face of a sweeping immigration crackdown enforced by US President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration, it is learnt, is looking to deport about 18,000 Indians illegally staying in the country.
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said Friday the country was opposed to illegal immigration because this was “linked to several forms of organised crime”.
Jaiswal said they would take back Indians from America, and elsewhere, if they had overstayed in a particular country without papers. “We will take them back provided documents are shared with us so that we can verify their nationality that they are indeed Indians,” Jaiswal said at the press briefing Friday.
Jaiswal added that any talk about numbers—alluding to the figures reported in the media—was “premature” at this time. The new US administration had raised the issue with India during talks between External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and his American counterpart Marco Rubio on Tuesday.
This was Rubio’s first bilateral meeting, which was held soon after that of foreign ministers of the Quad (Australia, Japan, India and the US), a day after the inauguration of Trump.
“Secretary Rubio also emphasised the Trump Administration’s desire to work with India to advance economic ties and address concerns related to irregular migration,” a US readout had said after the Jaishankar-Rubio talks.
Trump, who was elected on the promise of strengthening the nation’s border security, has already made a number of executive decisions to overhaul the American immigration system, including ending birthright citizenship for those on temporary visas or non-citizens living in the US.
While several decisions are subject to legal review, the deportation issue has taken centre stage in US domestic policy. On Friday, the White House reported that 538 illegal immigrants have been arrested since the start of Trump’s second tenure on 20 January.
🚨DAILY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT REPORTING FROM ICE🚨
538 Total Arrests
373 Detainers Lodged
Examples of the criminals arrested below 🔽🔽🔽
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 24, 2025
The White House has also said that migrants without valid papers were being put on flights home. There were roughly 725,000 Indians living in the US illegally in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.
Pew said Indians make up the third largest group of illegal immigrants in the US, after those from Mexico and El Salvador.
However, flights deporting Indians from the US were ongoing even under the previous administration of Joe Biden. In 2024, the US repatriated close to 1,100 Indians, including sending a chartered flight carrying 100 individuals back to Punjab.
The number of flights removing Indians from the US has increased in recent years, given the higher number of attempts to illegally migrate to the country. In 2024 (1 October 2023 to 30 September 2024), US authorities caught 90,415 Indian nationals attempting to enter the country. In 2023, that figure was 96,917.
‘Raised issues of security with US’
Jaiswal also said Friday that India has always flagged with the US issues that concern its national security, when asked about the presence of India-designated terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun at an event connected to Trump’s inauguration.
“Whenever there is anti-India activity, we take up such matters with the US government. We will continue to raise such issues… which have a bearing on our security, which have an anti-India agenda,” Jaiswal said.
Pannun, the founder of banned separatist organisation ‘Sikhs for Justice’, apparently raised anti-India slogans at the 20 January event.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)