High-risk deportation flight with 132 Hry, Punjab immigrants to land on May 19

ARE AMONG 161 ILLEGAL INDIAN MIGRANTS TO BE SENT BY THE US

CHANDIGARH: A special high-risk charter (SHRC) mission conducted by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will repatriate 161 illegal Indian migrants, including 132 from Haryana and Punjab, on May 19.

The chartered flight run by the ICE air operations, the air transportation arm of the US agency entrusted with the task to remove illegal migrants from American soil, will land on Tuesday evening at Amritsar’s Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International airport with 76 illegal immigrants from Haryana and 56 from Punjab on board.

As per a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) communication to New Delhi, these immigrants were in the custody of ICE at detention centres in Texas, Arizona, California, New York and Washington. Most of the detainees from Haryana and Punjab besides Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil

Nadu were kept in detention at Prairieland Detention Center in Texas.

The deportees, as per the standard operating protocol, will have to undergo mandatory 14-day quarantine on their arrival due to the Covid-19 situation. Secretary, NRI Affairs, Punjab, Rahul Bhandari, said deportees from Punjab will be quarantined in their respective districts, while those from Haryana will be quarantined in their home state.

“We are trying to tie up with far-off states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and will quarantine their deportees if they request us to do so,” he added.

Haryana officials said they were working out the modalities for quarantining the deportees.

The SHRC mission is undertaken by ICE to deport individuals who cannot be removed via commercial airlines to locations worldwide, or because of other security concerns or risk factors.

An SHRC flight costs about $6,929 (Rs 5.25 lakh) to $26,795 (Rs 20.3 lakh) per flight hour depending on aircraft requirement, according to an ICE statement.

DHS records show that among 161 deportees arriving on May 19 at Amritsar, three are women – two from Gujarat and one from Maharashtra — and three 19-year olds (two from Haryana’s Kaithal and Kurukshetra and one from UP’s Pilibhit ). Besides, there are at least 15 deportees who are 20 years or less. The oldest deportee is a 59-year-old resident of Hoshiarpur in Punjab.

Statistics show that 92 Indian migrants were detained by US Customs and Border Protection personnel in Texas after they illegally crossed into the US from Mexico. There were 21 detentions in New York, 22 in Atlanta and as many in San Francisco.