New Delhi: About 1,100 Indians staying in illegally in the United States were repatriated to India between October 1, 2023, and September 30, 2024, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the US Department of Homeland Security, Royce Bernstein Murray, said.
Murray, at a virtual press conference, fielded questions from journalists who asked her on the October 22 charter flight to India, carrying illegal entrants to the US.
As The Wire has reported before, a press statement issued by the US Department of Homeland Security sated that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had “conducted a large-frame charter removal flight to the Republic of India of Indian nationals who did not establish legal basis to remain in the United States” on that day.
“Could you give us a sense of the number of Indians who have been deported in the last year from the United States? Have you analysed the trends in the recent past to see whether the number is accelerating?” Murray was asked.
“Let me start by saying that in fiscal year 2024 [the US fiscal year starts in October and ends in September], which just concluded at the end of September, the United States repatriated over 1,100 Indian nationals. That has been part of a steady increase in removals from the United States of Indian nationals over the past few years, which corresponds with a general increase in encounters that we have seen with Indian nationals in the last few years as well,” she said.
She noted that the US does not have a precise breakdown of the locations from which Indian nationals came from, but that the October 22 flight “deplaned in Punjab, which was designed to ensure that people in general may be closer to their place of origin.”
“However, that is meant to convey that individuals may or may not be from Punjab and surrounding states. But we do not have a precise breakdown of the locations from which Indian nationals who were returned have originated,” she stressed.
As the earlier report had noted, unlike the phrases in vogue in India in political statements, official documents or even court rulings, the US press release refers to the persons being deported as “Indian nationals who did not establish legal basis to remain in the United States.”
In India, Union home minister Amit Shah has used the word “termites” to refer to Bangladeshi migrants, while he and other ministers regularly refer to undocumented migrants from that country as “infiltrators”.
