Punjab: A US plane carrying 116 illegal Indian immigrants landed at the Amritsar International Airport late Saturday night. A third plane carrying 157 deportees is expected to land on February 16.

A C-17 aircraft landed at the airport around 11.35 pm. This is the second batch of Indian immigrants to be deported by the Donald Trump administration as part of its crackdown on illegal immigrants.

It was not immediately clear whether the deportees were in shackles, like the previous batch was, reported PTI. The deportees will be allowed to head to their homes after completion of formalities, including immigration, verification, and background checks, officials said.

Many from the first batch of illegal immigrants landed on February 5, most of them from Punjab, who said they wanted to migrate to the US for a better life for their families but were duped by their agents. They were caught on the US border and sent back in shackles.

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Relatives wait outside the airport ahead of the second batch of the immigrants' arrival from the US. Photo: PTI

Earlier, reporters said that the plane would carry 119 immigrants, but as per an updated list of passengers, the number of deportees in the second batch was 116, officials said.

Of the fresh batch of deportees, 65 are from Punjab, 33 from Haryana, eight from Gujarat, two each from Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, and one each from Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Most of them are aged 18 to 30.

On February 5, a US military aircraft carrying 104 illegal Indian immigrants landed at the Amritsar airport. Of them, 33 each were from Haryana and Gujarat, and 30 were from Punjab.

The CM visited the international airport in Amritsar and said his government has made arrangements to take the Punjab residents from among the second deportees to their home towns. He added that his administration has also offered to take the deportees from Haryana to their destinations.

However, the Haryana government has already made similar arrangements. The deportees from the other states will travel to Delhi from Amritsar on a plane on Sunday morning, Mann said, adding food arrangements has been made for them.

Mann said there are many airbases in the country and planes carrying immigrants can land at any one of those. "Will they (the authorities) allow the landing (of a plane carrying immigrants) in Vatican City if they (immigrants) hail from there?" he asked.

Replying to a question on BJP leader R P Singh's post on X that Amritsar is the closest international airport for planes entering India from the US, Mann wondered that in that case, why the Centre has not started flight services to the US from the city, which has been the demand of the state government.

Congress leader Partap Singh Bajwa said the AAP government in Punjab "failed" to curb human trafficking and asked Mann how many travel agents were booked for human trafficking in the last three years.

A four-member Special Investigation Team, headed by Additional Director General of Police, NRI Affairs, Praveen Sinha, was recently formed by Punjab Director General of Police Gaurav Yadav to probe complaints regarding the involvement of fraudulent travel agents in deceptive immigration practices. The DGP on Saturday requested the public to come forward with any information about these rackets.

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