India engaging US to ensure deportees not mistreated, foreign minister says

Jaspal Singh spent 11 days in the US before he was deported

The US has not given further details of how deportees were treated on the flight. Officials have said that enforcing immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States and it was US policy to faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens.

The US border patrol chief posted video showing deportees in shackles, saying the deportation flight to India was the farthest deportation flight yet using military transport.

President Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals a key policy. The US is said to have identified about 18,000 Indian nationals it believes entered illegally.

Trump has said India‘s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that the country would do what’s right in accepting US deportations.

In his statement on Thursday, Jaishankar said all countries had an obligation to take back their nationals who had entered other countries illegally. They often faced dangerous journeys and inhumane working conditions once they had reached their destinations, he said.

Fraudulent Indian travel agencies are known to take huge sums of money from people desperate to travel abroad for work, and then make them undertake dangerous journeys to avoid being caught by immigration officials.

Jaspal said he had taken a loan of 4m rupees ($46,000; £37,000] to travel to the US, a dangerous journey that took months and during which he saw bodies in the jungle of other migrants who had died on the route.

Watch: What to know about Trumps migrant deportation flights

Opposition leaders have condemned the manner in which migrants were brought back to the country and have asked the government what action it plans to take over the treatment meted out to its citizens.

Congress MP Manickam Tagore called it shocking and shameful.

The way the US is deporting Indians - chained like criminals - is inhumane and unacceptable, he posted on X.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said the US had the right to deport people who had entered the country illegally but criticised the manner in which they were deported.

To send them like this abruptly in a military aircraft and in handcuffs is an insult to India, its an insult to the dignity of Indians, he said.

This isnt the first time that the US has faced the ire of politicians for allegedly mistreating migrants from their countries.

Last month, Brazils government expressed outrage after about 88 of its nationals arrived in their homeland handcuffed. The government said that it would demand an explanation from Washington over the degrading treatment of passengers on the flight.

Meanwhile, Colombia sent its own planes to collect deportees after Colombian President Gustavo Petro barred US military aircraft from landing, arguing that those on board were being treated like criminals.

Rights groups have urged countries to ensure deportees are treated humanely.