New Delhi: Earlier this week, Jamaica forced a planeload of Indian nationals to return from Kingston, marking the second instance within six months of a chartered flight filled with Indian passengers departing from a West Asian city being denied entry upon arrival.
On May 2, a chartered flight with a German crew and around 250 Indian passengers landed at Jamaica’s Norman Manley International Airport from Dubai. On arrival, the 253 passengers were stopped by Jamaican authorities who were suspicious that this was a trafficking operation. All of them were eventually allowed to return to Dubai earlier this week.
The MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal confirmed that Jamaica had forced the planeload of Indian passengers to leave the country.
“We understand that a Germany registered chartered flight with Indians on board landed in Kingston from Dubai on 2 May for tourism purposes. They had prior hotel bookings. The local authorities were not satisfied with them as tourists. The flight and passengers were ordered to return to place of origin-Dubai. The passengers left Kingston on 7 May,” he said at the weekly media briefing on Thursday.
The incident was similar to the interception of a chartered flight from Dubai at Vatry airport in France in December 2023. The final destination of the flight was Nicaragua, which is usually the first stop for people to attempt to cross the border illegally into the United States. Out of the 303 passengers, around 27 opted for political asylum, while the rest were repatriated to India.
According to a local newspaper Jamaica Gleaner, some of the Indian nationals told immigration authorities that they travelled to Jamaica for a five-day tour, but their itineraries revealed coverage for only one day.
Additionally, the newspaper reported that some of the travellers were en route Nicaragua, while others intended to journey to Canada.
In a statement, Jamaica’s Ministry of National Security announced that the passengers were denied entry due to security concerns uncovered during immigration processing.
Jamaican authorities were initially alerted while the flight was in the air due to inconsistencies in the flight’s permit application to land. Additionally, two passengers aboard the flight were not listed on the submitted manifest.
In connection with the incident, the newspaper quoted an anonymous immigration official as saying that Indians are “monitored nationals” globally and are manually processed by an officer, rather than by machines, upon arrival in Jamaica because of their risk profile.
The US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) has noted an unprecedented increase in illegal crossings by Indian nationals across both land borders.
In 2023, CBP reported apprehending 97,000 Indian nationals for illegal crossings, marking a significant jump from the 16,000 recorded in 2019.
The Pew Research Centre’s 2023 report listed India (725,000) as the source for the third largest population of illegal immigrants in United States, after Mexico (4.1 million and El Salvador, 800,000). It was the only non-Latin American country in the top five countries of origin. The report found that there was a surge in illegal immigrants from India starting in 2017.
