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Amid the political uproar surrounding the deportation of citizens under President Trump's administration, the return of a planeload of undocumented Indian immigrants has raised concerns about the repercussions of such actions.
The US government has said that many more such illegal immigrants would be identified and deported, while the Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in the Parliament that the Indian government is "actively engaging with the Donald Trump administration to ensure that deported Indian migrants are treated with dignity and not subjected to mistreatment."
WHAT'S NEXT FOR DEPORTED INDIANS?
Senior advocate and Delhi Bar Council Chairman KK Manan said that the deported people themselves would face no legal action in India, unless they travelled with fake/fabricated documents.
"There will be no legal consequences against them in India as long as they have genuine Indian passports, and they used their own valid documents. If someone had used a fake passport or added their own photo to someone else's passport or changed their name/date of birth or other details on the passport for the 'dunki' route, then they could face prosecution under the Passport Act. Otherwise, they are back in their own country and they go back home," said Manan.
Senior Advocate Atul Nanda, former Advocate General of Punjab during the Captain Amarinder Singh government, said that there is "very little chance that these people would have been involved in making fake papers" as most such migrants are semi-literate and belong to poor families.
Advocate Kamlesh Mishra, who has worked on issues relating to deportation of illegal immigrants from India, told India Today that there cannot be any prosecution of the deported migrants unless they have been convicted of any crimes in the host country or were involved in any passport fraud in India.
"They have been sent back to their home country. At most they can be questioned to see if their documents to leave the country are correct," said Mishra.
CAN THEY GO BACK TO US?
Lawyers agree that those who have been deported as illegal immigrants may not be able to go back.
Advocate Nanda said, "Whenever you fill out a visa form there is a column that asks if you have been deported. Once there is the stigma of deportation, the majority of countries will not give them a visa".
"Particularly countries like USA, Canada, Australia, UK, Schengen (European) countries won't give visa to anyone who has been deported as an illegal immigrant," he added.
According to the US Embassy website, "A person who has been deported or removed, may be prohibited from reapplying for a visa depending on the circumstances, for up to ten years. In certain cases, a waiver of this ineligibility may be available."
The US State Department website says that 'illegal aliens' who have been deported cannot apply for a visa for at least 5 years, and several clauses relating to admissibility have been laid down.
ACTION AGAINST TRAVEL AGENTS?
"The hammer should now fall on the travel agents who have sent them illegally after taking lakhs from them. It's the right of every country to deport illegal immigrants," said KK Manan.
Former Punjab AG Atul Nanda said that the focus should now be on rounding up and prosecuting the travel agencies that sent these people on illegal routes to America.
"The people who should face legal consequences are the people who were instrumental in sending them there illegally. Now you will see that the majority of these deported people will be semi-literate or barely literate. They would not have had a hand in creating fake papers," said Nanda.
The former Advocate General also pointed out that in many areas of Punjab, particularly in Doaba and rural Punjab, travel agencies "paint a rosy picture" of life in America, Canada or the UK, asking people to pay lakhs of rupees to migrate to these countries.
"They send them to travel via another country. They take them to various places, many times they travel in containers in very bad conditions. The entire wealth of the family is spent in the hope that the son will get somewhere and earn money," said Nanda, adding that the deportation is now a "double whammy" for these families, which pinned their hopes on earnings abroad.
"You now have a set of almost 200 people who have come back. It should be thoroughly investigated who are the people who sent them abroad and how they were sent⦠There is something called a 'dunki' system. In the past 10 years, how many travel agents were booked or convicted? It is dismal!," says Nanda.
The "dunki system" issue has also been raised before Parliament. As on December 5, 2024, the MEA, in a response to a question asked in the Rajya Sabha, had stated that "as and when complaints of illegal migration/human trafficking are received, such matters are referred to the State Police for investigation and prosecution under the relevant legal provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and other legislation in place including that enacted by the Punjab Government like Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act, 2012."
In the cyber domain, action is also taken against illegal recruiting agents in association with Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and state Police authorities. Requests to take down social media posts of illegal recruiting agencies from all over India including Punjab, have been regularly shared with MHA and in a recent joint operation of the Ministry and Punjab Police, 38 FIRs have been registered against the illegal recruiting agencies based in Punjab.
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