7 hours after arrival, deportees leave Amritsar airport in batches

Around seven hours after a US military plane carrying 112 deportees landed at Amritsar’s Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport on Sunday night, they left in buses, with police vehicles escorting them, through two different gates of the airport in the wee hours of Monday. It was the third such batch of Indians to be sent back amid a crackdown by the Donald Trump administration against illegal immigrants.

In all, 333 deportees have arrived in three US army flights here in the past two weeks, prompting the state government to accuse the Centre of making the planes land at Amritsar as part of a larger scheme to defame Punjab.

They were not allowed to speak to media. Neither were their families permitted to receive them. The deportees, who arrived at 10.03 pm on Sunday, were allowed to move out in small batches only after 4.30 am. It took half an hour for the authorities to take them out of the airport.

Among the deportees, minimum 44 were from Haryana, followed by 31 from Punjab, and one from Himachal Pradesh. Arrangements were made for the transportation of deportees to their destinations by the respective states, the officials said. Being ferried in buses deportees tried to avoid media glare.