Ahmedabad: Amid the likelihood of a stricter illegal immigrant deportation policy in America, the latest US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Fiscal Year 2024 Annual Report released on Dec 19, states that 2,647 Indians were arrested for immigration violations during the year and all are likely to be deported.
The violations ranged included overstaying their visas or illegal entry.India was fourth among nations with the highest number of detainees, following Mexico (5,089), Honduras (2,957) and Guatemala (2,713), countries with proximity to the US, states the report.
ICE plans to deport these individuals, likely using chartered flights, a common method for repatriating non-citizens with final removal orders. Sources in the agencies said that ICE has prepared a list of 18,000 Indians given removal orders, and as many as 2,647 of them are under detention.
The ICE data till Nov 2024 shows that 17,940 Indians are among the 14.45 lakh individuals on the non-detained docket with final orders of removal from the US. In the fiscal year of 2024, the number of Indians deported grew by 400% between 2021 (292 out of a total of 59,011 deported) and 2024 (1,529 out of 271,484), the report states. During the Covid years of 2019 and 2020, under Donald Trump’s first term as US President, a total of 3,928 (1,616 and 2,312, respectively) illegal Indian immigrants were sent back. Comparatively, in 2021, when Joe Biden took office, the total number of Indians deported till the report’s release in 2024 reached 3,467.
The report mentioned that US authorities have already begun sending back people. One such flight landed in New Delhi in Oct, carrying nearly 120 Indian illegal immigrants.
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