Chandigarh: A plane carrying 116 illegal Indian immigrants from the US landed at the Amritsar International Airport late on Saturday night, sources said. This is the second batch of Indians to be deported by the Trump administration as part of its crackdown on illegal immigrants.
The flight landed at the airport around 11.30 pm as against the expected time of 10 pm, they said. It was unclear if the deportees were in shackles or not. The sources said the plane would carry 119 immigrants, but as per an update, the number of deportees in the second batch was 116 — 65 from Punjab, 33 from Haryana, 8 from Gujarat, 2 each from UP, Goa, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, and 1 each from Himachal and J&K. Most deportees are in the age group of 18 to 30. The families of some deportees reached the airport to receive them.
A third plane carrying 157 deportees is also expected to land on Sunday, they said. Earlier, Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann continued his attack on the Centre over the landing of US planes at Amritsar and asked it not to make the holy city a “deport centre”. Mann said his government has made arrangements to take the Punjab residents to their hometowns. He said his administration has also offered to take the deportees from Haryana to their destinations. However, the Haryana government has already made arrangements.
The deportees from the other states will travel to Delhi from Amritsar on a plane on Sunday morning and will then be taken to their respective places, Mann said. Arrangements for food has been made for all the deportees, he added. Earlier, talking to reporters at Amritsar airport, the CM continued his attack on the Centre and said, “Do not make our holy city a deport centre.”
He said Amritsar is known for the Golden Temple, the Durgiana Mandir, the Ram Tirath temple, Jallianwala Bagh and the Gobindgarh Fort. There are many airbases in the country and planes carrying immigrants can land at any one of those, he said. “Will they (the authorities concerned) allow the landing (of a plane carrying immigrants) in Vatican City, if they (immigrants) hail from there?” he asked.
On BJP leader RP Singh’s post on X that Amritsar is the closest international airport for planes entering India from the US, Mann wondered in that case, why the Centre has not started flight services to the US from the city, which has been the demand of the state government. BJP leader Tarun Chugh accused Mann of playing politics over deportees. Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa said the AAP government has “failed” to curb human trafficking. He asked Mann how many travel agents were booked for human trafficking in the last three years.
