NEW DELHI: India’s parliament was disrupted Thursday as opposition lawmakers protested the alleged mistreatment of 104 Indian immigrants deported by the US.
A US military plane carrying Indian migrants arrived Wednesday in a northern Indian city, the first such flight to the country as part of a crackdown ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration.
Renuka Chowdhury, a lawmaker in the Congress party, said the deportees were “handcuffed, had their legs chained and even struggled to use the washroom.” Her colleague, Gaurav Gogoi, called it “degrading.”
Parliament adjourned as the opposition chanted slogans and demanded a discussion about flights.
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One deportee, Jaspal Singh, said the immigrants’ handcuffs and leg chains were taken off only at the Amritsar airport in India.
The protests mirrored concerns after a contentious deportation flight to Brazil on Jan. 25 prompted that country’s government to seek an explanation for the “degrading treatment” of 88 passengers.
US civilian authorities also shackle migrants by their ankles and wrists, but deportation flights to India are rare. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement had three flights to the city of Amritsar last year, according to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data.
The Trump administration’s use of military aircraft for deportations to countries including Guatemala and Ecuador is a departure from previous practice, which relied on ICE’s use of chartered and commercial planes.
Parliament Speaker Om Birla tried to calm the lawmakers, saying the transportation of the deportees was a matter of US foreign policy and that the US “also has its own rules and regulations.”
One deportee, Jaspal Singh, said the immigrants’ handcuffs and leg chains were taken off only at the Amritsar airport in India.
Singh, 36, said they initially thought they were being taken to another camp in the US and only found out about their deportation once on the plane. “The flight was into 8-9 hours and an officer informed (us) that we are being deported” to India, he said.
Opposition lawmakers, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, also protested outside the Parliament as they demanded a response from the government. Some wore handcuffs and carried placards that read: “Humans, not prisoners.”
“Indians deserve Dignity and Humanity, NOT Handcuffs,” Gandhi wrote on the social media platform X.
Gandhi uploaded a video showing another deportee, Harvinder Singh, as saying they were handcuffed and their feet chained for 40 hours.
“We were not allowed to move an inch from our seats. It was worse than hell,” he said.
Later Thursday, India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told the Parliament’s upper house that US regulations have allowed for the use of restraints since 2012, both on military and civilian flights. He said the US authorities have informed them that women and children are not restrained.
“There has been no change, I repeat, no change, from past procedure for the flight undertaken by the US” on Wednesday, he said.
Jaishankar said the government was engaging the US authorities to “ensure that the returning deportees are not mistreated.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Washington next week. Trump and Modi discussed immigration in a phone call last week and Trump stressed the importance of fair bilateral trade and India buying more American-made security equipment.
A spokesperson at the US Embassy in New Delhi said enforcing immigration laws was critical for the country’s national security and public safety.
“It is the policy of the US to faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens,” Christopher Elms said.
Indians were arrested more than 14,000 times for illegally entering the US on the Canadian border during a 12-month period that ended Sept. 30. That amounted to 60 percent of all arrests along that border and more than 10 times the number two years ago. Indians were arrested more than 25,000 times on the Mexican border during that time.
Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister, told parliament that 15,668 Indian nationals have been deported back to India from the US since 2009.
