A US military plane began deporting Indian migrants, implementing US President Donald Trump's hardline stance against an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States.
The C-17 aircraft carrying 205 Indian nationals departed from San Antonio, Texas departed around 3 am IST. Sources told NDTV that all Indians on board the flight were verified by the Indian government.
India is the farthest destination of US military flights deporting migrants, with the Pentagon stating flights to deport over 5,000 migrants from El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California. So far, military aircraft have flown migrants to Guatemala, Peru and Honduras.
Trump launched the military deportation flights last week as part of his emergency declaration on immigration, so far sending six planeloads of migrants on flights to Latin America. Only four landed, all of them in Guatemala, after Colombia refused to let two US C-17 cargo aircraft land and instead sent its own planes to collect migrants following a standoff with Trump.
"For the first time in history, we are locating and loading illegal aliens into military aircraft and flying them back to the places from which they came," Trump told reporters last month.
The US President had said after a call with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the latter "will do what's right" when it comes to taking back illegal Indian immigrants from America. Bloomberg News reported that India and the US have identified some 18,000 Indian migrants who are in the US illegally. Indians account for the bulk of the skilled worker H-1B visas issued by the United States.
The deportations and border control come after Trump had said on his first day in office that he will deport "millions and millions" of migrants, while declaring a national emergency at the southern border. Day within him assuming the top post, the the US Congress approved a bill that would require the detention and deportation of undocumented migrants who enter the country without authorisation and are charged with certain crimes. Even during his campaign trail, he had said, "When I am reelected, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history."
Trump has often used the military to implement his immigration agenda. He has sent troops to the US Mexico border, used military bases to house migrants and military aircraft to fly them out of the US. However, Reuters reported that a military deportation flight to Guatemala last week likely cost at least $4,675 per migrant. That is more than five times the $853 cost of a one-way first class ticket on American Airlines from El Paso, Texas, news agency AFP reported. It is also significantly higher than the cost of a commercial charter flight by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Aside from immigration, Trump also announced a string of tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, adding that similar measures are in the works for Europe too. Tariff hikes on Canada will also be delayed by a month as it brought itself a brief reprieve with a promise of $1.3 billion on measures to stop the flow of drugs and undocumented migrants into the US through the northern border. Mexico won itself a similar reprieve earlier with the commitment of 10,000 troops to its border with the US.
Additional tariffs of 25 per cent on imports from Mexico and Canada were to go into effect from Tuesday over the flow of undocumented migrants and drugs into the US through their borders. A lower 10 per cent hike is coming in China, but there were no talks ahead of it.
