Screengrab of Financial Express footage (YouTube).
New Delhi: Following the news that Indian deportees from the US were chained while they were moved home by flight, a large uproar broke out in the country, including inside the Parliament. Union Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar defended the US using restraints, issuing a suo motu statement in Rajya Sabha that it was a standard operating procedure used by ICE since 2012, The Indian Express reported.
On Wednesday, a US military C-17 aircraft with 104 deportees onboard landed at Amritsar airport. The flight, which took off from San Antonio in Texas, took off on Tuesday with deportees hailing from Haryana, Gujarat, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra. Handcuffs and chains were used on them while they were transported.
Jaishankar told the RS that it is the obligation of all countries to take back their nationals if they are found living illegally abroad. He added that the Centre is engaging with the US government to ensure that deportees are not ill-treated, TIE reported.
“It is the obligation of all countries to take back their nationals if they are found to be living illegally abroad. This is naturally subject to an unambiguous verification of their nationality. This is not a policy applicable to any specific country nor indeed one only practised by India,” TIE quoted Jaishankar’s statement at the upper house.
When asked if deportations have increased in recent years, the foreign minister claimed that the process of deportation is not a new one and has been going on for years.
Further, the minister shared the details of deportations from the US since 2009. When it was 734 till that year, it reached 1,303 in 2016. However, in 2024, 1,368 Indians were deported from the US.