US Deports Indian Illegal Immigrants in Handcuffs and Chains Aboard Military Aircraft

[Riaz Haq]

A US Air Force transport plane landed in India today with 104 illegal Indian immigrants in handcuffs and shackles, according to media reports. Speaking with reporters, a deportee said: “For 40 hours, we were handcuffed, our feet tied with chains and were not allowed to move an inch from our seats. After repeated requests, we were allowed to drag ourselves to the washroom. The crew would open the door of the lavatory and shove us in.”

Illegal Indian Immigrants Deported in Handcuffs and Chains. Source: News18

The inhumane treatment meted out to citizens of India, a US ally, has sparked a lot of anger against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. The critics are citing the example of Colombia, a small South American nation, whose president protested similar treatment of its citizens by the Trump administration. Colombian President Gustavo Petro turned back the US military planes carrying deportees and then sent his own aircraft to transport them back home in Colombia. 

Illegal immigration from India to the US has dramatically increased on Prime Minister Modi's watch. A Pew Research Center report said that as of 2022, India ranked third, after Mexico and El Salvador, on the list of countries with the largest number of undocumented immigrants — 725,000 — living in the U.S.

India has a serious unemployment problem, particularly for the young people entering the job market by the millions each year. This problem is concealed by headline  economic growth figures highlighted by the Modi government. At the same time, India is losing its best and brightest in a massive brain drain. 

"Leave India! It's High Time!!" screams out a recent Reddit post that has gone viral! The poster who claims to be an Indian entrepreneur warns of impending "terrible economic collapse" with a "massive depreciation of the Indian rupee".  

The now-deleted post, written by a user named ‘u/anonymous_batm_an,’ urges high-earning professionals, especially innovators, to leave India for countries with better opportunities and governance, as reported by the Times of India.  It recommends the UAE or Thailand as alternative destinations . The sentiments expressed in the post are already resonating with a large number of Indians.  The non-resident Indians now constitute the world's largest overseas diaspora. Every year, 2.5 million Indians leave their country of birth, making India the nation with the highest annual number of emigrants in the world. 

New Company Registrations in Dubai. Source: Khaleej Times

Indian investors continued to top the list of new non-Emirati companies joining the Dubai Chamber of Commerce during the first nine months of 2024. A total of 12,142 new Indian companies joined the chamber during the period, data showed on Monday, according to the Khaleej Times. Pakistan ranked second on the list with 6,061 new companies joining between Q1-Q3 2024, while Egypt followed with 3,611 new companies registering as members of the chamber. The number of new Syrian companies joining the chamber during the first nine months of the year reached 2,062, placing the country fourth among the top nationalities of new member companies.

India is losing its best and brightest to the West, particularly to the United States, at an increasingly rapid pace. A 2023 study of the 1,000 top scorers in the 2010 entrance exams to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) — a network of prestigious institutions of higher learning based in 23 Indian cities — revealed the scale of the problem. Around 36% migrated abroad, and of the top 100 scorers, 62% left the country, according to a report in the science journal Nature.  Nearly two-thirds of those leaving India are highly educated, having received academic or vocational training. This is the highest for any country, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Example of The Great Indian Brain Drain. Source: Boston Political R...

Brain drain is defined as the loss of precious human capital of a nation. It is a “consequence of an education system designed for ‘selecting’ the best and brightest in an economy that is still too controlled and cannot create opportunities for its best and brightest”, according to Indian economist Shruti Rajagopalan. High-profile examples of India's human capital loss include Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), Arvind Krishna (IBM) and Ajay Banga (World Bank). 

Foreign-Born STEM Workers in America. Source: American Immigration ...

Growing number of Indian students are going abroad for higher education each year and 90% of them never return home after completing their studies.  In 2022, the number of Indian students leaving the country for higher education reached a six-year high of 770,000. And a 2021 report estimated that around two million Indian students would be studying abroad by 2024. 

Many developing countries are experiencing brain drain. But India is losing its best brightest at a much faster rate than others. Some call it "The Great Indian Brain Drain". This is the reason why Indians in the United States are the best educated and the highest earning group.  In a recently published book titled "The Other One Percent", authors Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh explain this phenomenon. 

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[Riaz Haq]

Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
Trump has not deported a single illegal immigrant from China, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nepal, but already has sent back 205 of them handcuffed and chained to India. Trump is bullying Modi like no one else.

https://x.com/ashoswai/status/1887625106458812556

[Riaz Haq]

Fury in India over U.S. allegedly flying deportees halfway around the world in handcuffs and leg chains - CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-deported-indian-migrants-handcuffs-...

The U.S. deported more than 1,000 Indian migrants last year, but on commercial flights and without any reports of alleged mistreatment. It is standard practice for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to restrain adult deportees on flights out of the country, which the agency argues is to protect inflight security and the migrants themselves, by preventing riots and other safety issues.

Chief Michael W. Banks
@USBPChief
USBP and partners successfully returned illegal aliens to India, marking the farthest deportation flight yet using military transport. This mission underscores our commitment to enforcing immigration laws and ensuring swift removals.

If you cross illegally, you will be removed.

https://x.com/USBPChief/status/1886946028185682347

[Riaz Haq]

U.S. plane carrying 119 Indian deportees likely to land in Amritsar on February 15
A U.S. plane carrying 119 illegal immigrants is likely to land at Amritsar airport on February 15, the second such batch of Indians deported by the Trump government as part of a crackdown it resolved to carry out when it was sworn in last month.

According to official sources, the plane is expected to land at the airport around 10 p.m. on Saturday (February 15, 2025).

Among the 119 illegal Indian immigrants, 67 hail from Punjab, 33 from Haryana, eight from Gujarat, three from Uttar Pradesh, two each from Goa, Maharashtra and Rajasthan and one each from Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, they said.

Another U.S. plane carrying deportees is also expected to land on February 16.

The development came days after a U.S. military aircraft carrying 104 illegal Indian immigrants landed at the Amritsar airport last week. Of them, 33 each were from Haryana and Gujarat and 30 from Punjab.

Most of the deportees hailing from Punjab had said they wanted to migrate to the U.S. for a better life for their families. However, their dreams were shattered when they were caught at the U.S. border and brought back in shackles.

After Donald Trump assumed office as the U.S. President, the country’s law enforcement agencies have launched a crackdown against illegal immigrants.

[Riaz Haq]

Ashok Swain
@ashoswai
Trump came to the the White House gate to receive Israeli PM, Jordanian King, and Japanese PM. To receive Modi, Trump sent his Secretary. Modi is an insult to 1.4 billion Indians and has ruined India’s reputation and stature!

https://x.com/ashoswai/status/1891464478392234036

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Trump Calls Modi ‘A Great Friend’ but Warns India Won’t Be Spared From Tariffs



https://time.com/7222446/trump-modi-meet-tariffs/



WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump greeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House with a bear hug on Thursday and called him “a great friend of mine,” but nonetheless warned that India won’t be spared from higher tariffs he’s begun imposing on U.S. trade partners around the world.

Trump, who had previously derided India as the “tariff king,” called the import levies imposed by Modi’s country “very unfair and strong.”

“Whatever India charges, we charge them,” Trump said at a joint news conference where he stood next to Modi. “So, frankly, it no longer matters to us that much what they charge.”

As he has while recently hosting other foreign leaders, Trump talked about ensuring that the U.S. erases its trade deficit with India. He suggested that could be done by increasing U.S. energy exports to India but also promised to restore “fairness and reciprocity” to the economic relationship and said he and Modi had begun working on a major trade deal that could be completed later this year.

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ICE Conducts Raids In Durham, Indians Picked Up - IndiaWest Journal News

https://indiawest.com/ice-conducts-raids-in-durham-indians-picked-up/

DURHAM, NC – A recent immigration raid in Durham has intensified concerns within the Triangle’s large Indian American community, as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on illegal immigration.

According to ABC News, neighbors in a north Durham neighborhood recorded video of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detaining three men believed to be of Indian origin. The footage shows ICE officers swarming a car and later entering a home. In total, ABC News confirmed that 11 individuals were taken into custody during multiple raids in the area.

“It always makes you anxious when people are coming in, visiting homes, and taking people into custody without knowing where they are. These are people we’ve known in our community,” Morrisville Councilmember Steve Rao told ABC News.

Rao highlighted the challenges faced by the region’s tech industry, where many companies rely on highly skilled H-1B visa holders. He noted that an expired visa or an overstay can quickly alter someone’s legal status, putting them at risk of deportation.

“I think it’s really important for businesses to learn from this and ensure they conduct thorough background checks, verify legal immigration status, and confirm that all paperwork is in order before hiring,” he said.

Community members also expressed concern over ICE’s tactics, particularly the practice of raiding homes. Many fear such operations create an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, further straining trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement, ABC News said.

[Riaz Haq]

Trump’s tariffs present fresh headache for India’s slowing economy | Poverty and Development | Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/2/18/trumps-tariffs-present...

Hours before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the White House, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would levy reciprocal tariffs on its trading partners.

It could hardly have come at a tougher time for India, which is already pressed by a slowing economy and sluggish demand.

At a joint news conference, Trump said India would buy F-35 fighter jets and oil and gas from the US. The two countries would also begin negotiations on the US trade deficit with India.

India runs a large trade surplus with the US and such negotiations and military and oil purchases could adversely impact its economy at a time when it is going through a slowdown.

With the Indian economy expected to grow at 6.4 percent in the year ending March, its slowest in four years, the Modi government announced income tax relief for the middle class in the annual budget earlier this month.

Days later, the country’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in nearly five years by 0.25 percent to 6.25 percent with Governor Sanjay Malhotra saying a less restrictive monetary policy was more appropriate in light of the current “growth-inflation dynamics”

Economists warn the tax relief may not be enough for the vast majority of Indians, whose income still falls below taxable limits and who may still be reeling from the impact of the COVID pandemic, which devastated their earnings.

“There is a vast base [of people] where recovery has not come back after the pandemic,” says Kaushik Basu, professor of economics at Cornell University. “We see this in data that the agricultural labour base has increased. And agriculture may well be just a parking spot.”

Basu was referring to people who left urban jobs during India’s tight and prolonged COVID lockdown and returned to their villages. Without enough well-paying jobs to return to in cities, they have stayed in their villages doing seasonal agricultural labour.

Dhiraj Nim, an economist at ANZ Bank expects the tax relief to have a 0.2 percent impact on the gross domestic product (GDP) growth.

“People will consume a little more, but they will also save more. Some personal loan repayment will happen,” he said. “I don’t think the boost in consumption will offset the one trillion rupees [$11.5bn] given in relief by too much.”

Moreover, any economic boost will be a short-term measure while the problems it seeks to address “are more fundamental”, warns Alexandra Hermann, lead economist at Oxford Economics. “There is nothing [in the budget] that addresses employment or skilling,” that will lead to broader and more sustained growth, she says. Just about 2 percent of Indians currently pay income tax and unemployment and underemployment have stayed high, she says.



Some of India’s slowdown could be attributed to a cyclical tapering in demand after the post-pandemic recovery when the economy grew sharply. Industry heads and government officials believed India was on a high growth trajectory. The country is already the world’s fifth-largest economy and is projected to become the third-largest by 2030.

But now the “issues beneath the growth” have been revealed, Cornell’s Basu says. “While there has been inequality for at least two decades, what we are seeing now has not been seen since 1947,” the year that India won its independence from the British.

Delicate economic juggle
The government has sought to spur growth through strong spending on infrastructure such as roads and bridges. But stimulus provided during the pandemic meant the government needs to tighten its belt to meet its fiscal deficit target of 4.5 percent by next year. This reduced spending could also take away from some of the boost provided by the income tax relief, Nim of ANZ says.

[Riaz Haq]

Trump’s tariffs present fresh headache for India’s slowing economy | Poverty and Development | Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/2/18/trumps-tariffs-present...

Modi’s US visit comes amids this delicate economic moment in India. President Trump spoke of India’s high tariffs on American cars and other products meant to protect Indian industry and create domestic jobs.

India, like Mexico and Canada, will also enter negotiations to bridge its trade surplus, but this could involve concessions that could hurt Indian industry as well as purchases it can hardly afford. (New Delhi peremptorily reduced tariffs on Harley Davidson motorbikes in the budget.)

“It is notable that the Indian government has gone out of its way to avoid tariffs,” says Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, a Washington, DC-based think tank. “A big reason for this is the fragile economic growth.”

The Indian government also accepted its first 100 deportees from the US without official protest, although they were sent in a military aircraft and in handcuffs. At their news conference, Modi said these were victims of human trafficking, which had to stop. He did not bring up with Trump their treatment by the US as some other countries have for their own deportees.

High tariffs on steel imports that the US has already announced are bound to affect Indian exports. However, the Indian economy is largely fuelled by domestic consumption compared to other Asian economies, says Oxford Economics’ Hermann.

That is the deeper problem that is now starting to emerge.

Kartik Muralidharan, Tata Chancellor’s professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego, says the government’s expanded food transfer programme has supported India’s bottom half and may have led to their participation in the economy.

However, he and others underscore the need for greater economic reform to encourage higher and more equitable growth.

“Generally, reforms come at a time of external challenges,” Muralidharan says, referring to how India’s economic reforms in 1991 came in the wake of the Gulf War and a balance of payment crisis. “We need another ‘91,” he says.

Cornell’s Basu suggests the rising inequality would best be addressed through “a little higher tax for the super-rich and use it to support small businesses.”

Basu also says small businesses have been affected by compliance costs for the Goods and Services Tax and could be simplified and lowered.

The government has said it expects a growth rate of about 6.7 percent for the year ahead, indicating strong growth in the current global landscape. But ANZ’s Nim says the “bigger concern should be growing per capita income and better distribution of that income so it reaches people who need it.”

[Riaz Haq]

For India, Bangladesh protests highlight dangers of jobless growth - CSMonitor.com

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-South-Central/2024/0809/Young-...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under growing pressure to create jobs, particularly for India’s educated youth.

After months of rising unemployment and higher-education scandals, some young Indians say they’re losing faith in getting ahead through merit. And some opposition leaders say India could be heading in the same direction as Bangladesh.

Neighboring Bangladesh has been wracked by weeks of violent protests, led by students frustrated by limited job prospects. Both India and Bangladesh face persistent unemployment and inequality despite overall economic growth, and until this week, both were run by long-ruling prime ministers who’ve been accused of authoritarian practices in recent years.

“What happened in Bangladesh … has given a message to people in power,” said Uddhav Thackeray, former chief minister of Maharashtra, after Bangladesh’s prime minister fled the country. “Don’t test the patience of people.”

Mr. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has described such comments as incendiary and even anarchist, and political analysts note there are important differences between India and Bangladesh, including the former’s size and sprawl. Nevertheless, jobs are a major part of Mr. Modi’s platform; his government’s recently proposed budget includes $24 billion for job creation over the next five years.

“The situation [in Bangladesh] does put pressure on the government to address the employment issue more carefully, which they have not been doing effectively,” says economist Arun Kumar, who calls the budget announcement “more of a show.”

But for him, watching both countries grapple with similar issues highlights the relative strengths of India’s democracy. Compared with Bangladesh, where the opposition boycotted the most recent elections citing political suppression, India has a robust opposition and more freedom for dissent.



“In Bangladesh, a combination of factors created an explosive situation, something that has not yet occurred in India,” says the retired Jawaharlal Nehru University professor. “While unemployment in India is acute and the youth are frustrated, there are still avenues for expression.”

Employment crisis on the brink?
Unemployment has exceeded 5% every month this year, reaching an eight-month high of 9.2% in June before dipping to 7.9% in July, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. This was a key issue for voters during India’s recent general election; a prepoll survey by the Delhi-based Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies found that 62% of respondents believed finding a job had become harder compared with five years ago.

It’s a burden young people feel acutely. The India Employment Report 2024, released by the International Labour Organization and the Institute for Human Development in March, found that India’s youth comprise nearly 83% of the unemployed workforce. The proportion of unemployed youth with secondary or higher education nearly doubled, from 35.2% in 2000 to 65.7% in 2022.

Mr. Modi’s supporters have dismissed this data as misleading. BJP spokesperson Syed Zafar Islam said at a recent press conference that India is a leader in job creation, citing the latest Reserve Bank of India report, which states that 50 million jobs were created in 2023-24 alone.

International Monetary Fund Executive Director Krishnamurthy Subramanian has also pushed back on the idea that young people are unhappy with India’s job market. “There is no doubt that we need to create more jobs, that is because we are a young population,” the former chief economic adviser told The Quint this week. “But just because there is an emphasis on employment and job creation does not mean in a binary manner that jobs are not being created. … That’s important to keep in mind.”

[Riaz Haq]

Stanford-educated CEO slams 'unreliable’ Indian employees: ‘I might never go to India again’ | Trending - Hindustan Times

Entrepreneur Hari Raghavan criticized the work ethic of Indian employees after a recent visit, suggesting they require constant monitoring.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/trending/stanfordeducated-ceo-slams-...

Indian-American entrepreneur Hari Raghavan has spoken in defense of the much-derided AI startup Optifye, built to monitor factory workers, by saying that Indian employees are unreliable and need constant tracking.

Optifye.ai, co-founded by Indian-origin entrepreneurs Vivaan Baid and Kushal Mohta, uses computer vision technology to track workers on assembly lines and provide factory managers with productivity data. The startup came under fire after its product demo for Y Combinator went viral online for all the wrong reasons.

In the US, thousands of people slammed the AI startup, calling it a “dystopian” product to promote sweatshop slavery. But one Indian-American CEO begs to differ.

Hari Raghavan slams Indian employees
Hari Raghavan, co-founder and CEO of Autograph and a Stanford alumnus, took to the social media platform X to slam the work ethic of Indian employees, implying that they are lazy, don’t like to work, and need constant monitoring.

Raghavan said that the startup might appear tone-deaf to Americans, but is a much-needed product in India where workers often cut corners, take leaves, lag behind on their work, and generally do not work the way Americans do.

“I grew up in India and I don't think y'all understand how unreliable the work ethic of the average Indian employee is,” the Indian-American CEO wrote. “I don't think it's an accident that the company has a bunch of Indian founders and my guess is that they're targeting the manufacturing base in India. I think their biggest mistake was not realizing that it would be seen as tone deaf when marketed to a US audience on X or LinkedIn.”

10 times less efficient
Raghavan said that the lax work ethic of Indian employees is apparent in both physical labour and knowledge work.

Speaking from his own experience, he said that the same exact work that Boston Consulting Group did in three days would take two months if done at BNP Paribas Chennai.

Referring once again to the Optifye product demo that caused a furor in the United States, Raghavan said: “If you show that video to literally anyone, in almost any walk of life in India, they will nod furiously and say ‘yes this is what we need.’”

“If you are managing a group of workers in India, you have to breathe down every single person's neck every 10 minutes... and then, if you're lucky, they will get about half as much done as an average US worker,” he opined.

The Indian-origin CEO said that on average, an Indian worker is 10 times less efficient than an American worker.

The entrepreneur continued his rant saying he visited India a few weeks ago and is still fuming from the “million small unprofessional and incompetent interactions” he had there.

He went so far as to say he may never visit India again.

“I just got back from India a couple weeks ago, and I'm still frustrated remembering the million small unprofessional and incompetent interactions that define the daily experience. I might never go to India again because I can't deal with it,” the CEO, who holds a master’s degree in management science and engineering from Stanford University.