Like US, India should deport illegal immigrants: Vij

A day after a United States military aircraft carrying 104 deported Indian nationals from Haryana, Gujarat, Punjab and other states landed in Amritsar, the action has come under criticism from opposition parties in Haryana as well as by ruling AAP in Punjab.

Defending the deportation, Haryana cabinet minister Anil Vij on Thursday said that every country has a right to deport illegal immigrants and US President Donald Trump has not made any mistake in doing so.

The minister even suggested that like US, India should also think about deporting “lakhs and crores” of illegal immigrants in the country.

“Such people are born somewhere else, but we feed them. Why? They should go where they were born. We should also form a policy in this regard, and they should be sent back to their respective countries,” he added.

Meanwhile, a senior official in the state police department said, “An investigation has been initiated against the travel agents as the deportees have alleged that they were promised a ‘green card’, citizenship and regularisation, once they land in United States.”

However, the official said that they were sent back, and action will be taken against the agents based on the complaints received.

All the cases will be supervised by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) under Ambala Range IGP Sibash Kabiraj, which was constituted in 2023 by the then home minister Vij, to tackle rising cases of “kabootarbazi”.