Days after Modi-Trump meet, second US military plane carrying 119-deportees lands in Amritsar; third flight expected today

A US military aircraft carrying 116 illegal Indian immigrants landed at the Amritsar International Airport late Saturday night, official sources said. A C-17 aircraft landed at the airport around 11.35 pm as against the expected time of 10 pm, they said.

This is the second such batch of Indians to be deported by the Donald Trump administration as part of its crackdown on illegal immigrants. It was not immediately known whether the deportees were in shackles, as the previous batch was.

After an immigration and background check, the deportees hailing from Punjab were taken to their homes in police vehicles at around 4.30 am Sunday. Many from the first batch of illegal immigrants landed here on February 5, most of them from Punjab, said they wanted to migrate to the US for a better life for their families, but were duped by their agents. Their dreams were shattered when they were caught on the US border and sent back in shackles.

Earlier, there were reports that the plane would carry 119 immigrants, but as per an updated list of passengers, the number of deportees was 116, sources said. Of the fresh batch of deportees, 65 are from Punjab, 33 from Haryana, eight from Gujarat, two each from Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, and one each from Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Most of them are aged 18 to 30, as per the sources. The families of some of the deportees reached the airport to receive them.

A third plane carrying 157 deportees is also expected to land on February 16, sources said.

Punjab NRI Affairs minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal and Power Minister Harbhajan Singh met some of the deportees at the airport. Dhaliwal told them that the state government stood by them like a rock and asked them not to lose heart. 

On February 5, a US military aircraft carrying 104 illegal Indian immigrants landed at the Amritsar airport. Of them, 33 each were from Haryana and Gujarat, and 30 from Punjab. The family members of the second batch of deported illegal Indian immigrants seemed in a state of shock, with many of them saying that they raised money by pledging farm land and cattle to send them abroad for a bright future. 

A family member of Daljit Singh, a native of Kurala Kalan village in the Tanda area of Hoshiarpur district, said a travel agent duped him.Kamalpreet Kaur, the wife of Daljit, alleged that her husband was deceived by the travel agent who promised him a direct flight to the US but instead, took him via the "donkey route" -- an illegal and risky pathway used by migrants to enter the US.

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann attacked the Centre, as he did earlier, over the landing of US planes carrying the immigrants at Amritsar airport. "Do not make our holy city a deport centre," he said. Mann visited the international airport in Amritsar and said his government has made arrangements to take the Punjab residents to their hometowns. The chief minister said his administration has also offered to take the deportees from Haryana to their destinations. However, the Haryana government said it has already made similar arrangements.The deportees from the other states will travel to Delhi from Amritsar on a plane Sunday morning and will then be taken to their homes, Mann said, adding, arrangements for food have been made for all of them.

Mann earlier in the day said there are many air bases in the country and planes carrying immigrants can land at any one of those. "Will they (the authorities) allow the landing (of a plane carrying immigrants) in Vatican City, if they (immigrants) hail from there?" he asked. Replying to a question on a post of BJP leader R P Singh, who justified Amritsar as the landing destination for its being the closest international airport for planes entering India from the US, Mann wondered why the Centre had not started flight services to the US from the city, which has been a longstanding demand of the state.

BJP general secretary Tarun Chugh accused Mann of "doing politics" over deportees. Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa said the AAP government in Punjab "failed" to curb human trafficking, and asked Mann how many travel agents had been booked for human trafficking in the last three years. 

A four-member Special Investigation Team, headed by Additional Director General of Police, NRI Affairs, Praveen Sinha, was recently formed by Punjab Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav to probe complaints regarding the involvement of fraudulent travel agents. The DGP on Saturday requested the public to come forward with any information about these rackets.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from PTI)