A US military transport aircraft is deporting migrants to India, the first such flight since the US administration began sending back illegal migrants in line with President Donald Trump’s pledge to crack down on immigration.
An unnamed US official told Reuters late on Monday that a C-17 aircraft had departed for India with migrants aboard but would not arrive for at least 24 hours. The official didn’t give further details.
There was no word on the development from Indian officials. The number of people on the deportation flight could not immediately be ascertained. A C-17 heavy-lift transport aircraft can carry up to 130 people.
A spokesperson for the US embassy declined to share details of the flight and said: “The United States is vigorously enforcing its border, tightening immigration laws, and removing illegal migrants. These actions send a clear message: Illegal migration is not worth the risk.”
India is the farthest destination of the Trump administration’s military transport flights for migrants, Reuters reported. Trump has increasingly turned to the US military to help carry out his immigration agenda, including sending additional troops to the southern border with Mexico, using military aircraft to deport migrants, and opening military bases to house them.
The Pentagon has provided flights to deport more than 5,000 immigrants held by US authorities at El Paso in Texas and San Diego in California. Military aircraft have flown migrants to Guatemala, Peru, and Honduras so far.
Columbia’s President Gustavo Petro initially barred two US military planes carrying deported Colombians from landing but backed down after Trump threatened to slap punitive tariffs on the country’s exports to the US.
According to an American official, the US deported over 1,100 illegal migrants from India between October 2023 and September 2024. The last publicly acknowledged US flight that brought back Indians was on October 22, when about 100 illegal migrants were repatriated to India on a charter flight.
There has been a “steady increase” in deportations of illegal Indian migrants from the US in recent years, the official said during a virtual briefing last year.
India has said it is willing to work with the Trump administration to address all matters related to illegal immigration as part of its efforts to build a deeper relationship between the two sides. External affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a media briefing last month that India is opposed to illegal immigration because of its links to several forms of organised crime, and New Delhi will take back all Indians who have either overstayed in the US or are there without documentation. He, however, said India will accept such migrants only after verifying their nationality.
Jaiswal said it would be “premature” to talk about the number of illegal Indian immigrants in the US but said New Delhi “will take things forward” and facilitate the return of all such migrants. People familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity that figures from the US department of homeland security suggested there are close to 18,000 illegal immigrants from India in the US.
Military flights are a costly way to transport migrants. Reuters reported that a military deportation flight to Guatemala last week likely cost at least $4,675 per migrant. More needs to be done to raise awareness about the consequences of using unlawful migration pathways and the role of unscrupulous travel agencies, a senior American official said on Tuesday.
The US is continuing to strengthen its working relationship with the Indian government to tackle this issue and is “very pleased” with the cooperation it has received so far from New Delhi, border and immigration policy assistant secretary Royce Bernstein Murray told an online briefing.
“In fiscal year 2024, which just concluded at the end of September, the US repatriated over 1,100 Indian nationals. That has been part of a steady increase of removals from the US of Indian nationals over the past few years,” she said.
Asked specifically about a charter flight operated on October 22 to send illegal migrants back to India, Murray said such “large-scale charter flights typically have over 100 individuals”. This flight had a mix of men and women and was a “smooth operation” that had “excellent cooperation from the government in India”, she added.
Murray didn’t provide details of the number of charter flights operated in the last US fiscal year to deport illegal migrants but said some persons were also sent back on commercial flights. She said higher numbers of people from the Americas and the Western Hemisphere attempt to illegally enter the US than from places such as India, which are further away.
“We are continuing to strengthen our working relationship with the government of India across a range of issues and welcome the partnership that we have had and know we will continue to have so that we can better address the challenges [such as] the use of human smugglers or unscrupulous travel agencies that are preying on vulnerable migrants and providing them with false information,” she said.
People familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity that the Indian side has been cooperating with the US on this issue as tackling illegal migration is a priority for both countries. “We want people to go abroad for work or studies through legal means. This isn’t a problem with just the US but also several other countries,” one of the people cited above said.
Murray acknowledged that more needs to be done by both sides to increase awareness about the consequences of illegal migration. “I agree the need to do robust public messaging to ensure that people have good information about how to access lawful pathways to the US and the consequences for failing to use lawful pathways and attempting to irregularly migrate to the US is critically important,” she said.
“We need to do more to be able to reach people, whether they are unaccompanied children, or other individuals who are seeking to migrate irregularly and could fall prey to these unscrupulous actors.”
Young people interested in studying in the US have been a target of human trafficking and illegal immigration rings and both sides have to ensure that they have accurate information about student visas.
The US Department of Homeland Security conducted a “charter removal flight” to return an unspecified number of Indian nationals who couldn’t “establish legal basis” to remain in the United States, according to an official statement.
The statement, issued by the US embassy, did not specify how many Indian nationals were on the flight operated on October 22. People familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity that the deportation of Indian nationals by a chartered flight was the result of ongoing bilateral cooperation to deter illegal migration.
“On October 22, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), conducted a large-frame charter removal flight to the Republic of India of Indian nationals who did not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States,” the statement said.
