Amritsar/Chandigarh: A plane carrying 116 illegal Indian immigrants from the US landed at the Amritsar International Airport late on Saturday night, official sources said. This is the second such batch of Indians to be deported by the Donald Trump administration as part of its promised crackdown on illegal immigrants. The flight landed at the airport around 11:30 pm as against the expected time of 10 pm, they said.
It was not immediately clear whether the deportees were in shackles or not.
After the first batch of illegal immigrants was sent back on February 5, most of the deportees hailing from Punjab had said they wanted to migrate to the US for a better life for their families. However, their dreams were shattered when they were caught on the US border and sent back in shackles.
Earlier, there were reports that the plane would carry 119 immigrants, but now as per an updated list of passengers, the number of deportees in the second batch was 116, they added.
Among the deportees, 65 are from Punjab, 33 from Haryana, eight from Gujarat, two each from Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, and one each from Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Most of the deportees are in the age group of 18 to 30, as per the sources.
The families of some of the deportees reached the airport to receive them.
A third plane carrying 157 deportees is also expected to land on February 16, they said.
On February 5, a US military aircraft carrying 104 illegal Indian immigrants landed at the Amritsar airport. Of them, 33 each were from Haryana and Gujarat, and 30 from Punjab.
Speaking earlier in the day, the family members of a second batch of illegal Indian immigrants deported from the US were in a state of shock, with many of them saying that they raised money by pledging farm land and cattle to send them abroad for a bright future.
