‘Handcuffed deportees’: Haryana Congress MPs slam BJP-led Centre, call episode ‘insult’ to India

“Sending back Indian citizens in handcuffs, shackled in military planes is an insult to every Indian and India. The US government is humiliatingly deporting Indian citizens on the basis of illegal documents, handcuffing them, and shackling them in military planes. These youths went there by selling their land and property in search of employment, putting their lives at risk. But now they are facing economic ruin and social displacement. The BJP government has been repeatedly claiming that the President of America is a friend of PM Narendra Modi, but as soon as he became the President of America, the PM’s same friend forcibly deported a large number of Indians in such a humiliating manner,” Hooda said.

Hooda demanded that “the prime minister should immediately talk to the US government so that Indians living in America for years are not expelled in a humiliating manner. Apart from this, the central government should hold diplomatic talks with the US to provide legal aid for Indians facing deportation… A legal aid cell should be set up to help the affected families.”

The Congress MP said he had raised the issue of youths going abroad without a visa in the Budget session of Parliament last year, but Kirti Vardhan Singh, Minister of State, External Affairs, had shrugged off the responsibility and said the government was not responsible if people going abroad adopted other means. “If the government had taken my words seriously that day, then we would not have to see this day today,” Hooda added.

He also blamed the lack of jobs in Haryana for forcing the youths to adopt unfair means to move abroad.

“According to the data of US Customs and Border Patrol, between October 2022 and September 2023, over 90,000 Indians were arrested while crossing illegally into the US from Mexico after trekking through the jungles of Panama… Wrong policies of the government are completely responsible for the highest unemployment rate in Haryana, migration due to it, and now forced deportation,” Hooda remarked.

Seeking clarifications from the government in the House, Surjewala said, “Why is the government silent? Indian citizens were chained for over 40 hours and had only one toilet at their disposal during this arduous journey. Are Indian citizens terrorists? Why is the government silent? Thousands of our Indian brothers and sisters are imprisoned in US detention centres. How will they be brought back? Has the government raised this issue with the US to provide counsellor access to Indian nationals detained there?”

Sirsa MP Kumari Selja said if the youths were provided employment opportunities in India, the current situation would not have arisen.

“There is an immediate need to eliminate the human trafficking network, provide financial and social reintegration assistance to the deported individuals, and establish a transparent migration framework to prevent such difficulties for Indians in the future,” Selja added.