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Migrant deported in chains: 'No-one will go to US illegally now'

Yogita Limaye
South Asia and Afghanistan correspondent
BBC Gurpreet Singh, an Indian man with a beard and black hair that is cut short at the back and sides but long on top, wearing a black T-shirt as he sits in a room with a mural on one wall featuring trees and geometric shapes, while on the other wall the plaster is crumbling.BBC
Gurpreet Singh hoped to enter the US before President Trump's crackdown began

Gurpreet Singh was handcuffed, his legs shackled and a chain tied around his waist. He was led on to the tarmac in Texas by US Border Patrol, towards a waiting C-17 military transport aircraft.

It was 3 February and, after a months-long journey, he realised his dream of living in America was over. He was being deported back to India. "It felt like the ground was slipping away from underneath my feet," he said.

Gurpreet, 39, was one of thousands of Indians in recent years to have spent their life savings and crossed continents to enter the US illegally through its southern border, as they sought to escape an unemployment crisis back home.

There are about 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US, the third largest group behind Mexicans and El Salvadoreans, according to the most recent figures from Pew Research in 2022.

Now Gurpreet has become one of the first undocumented Indians to be sent home since President Donald Trump took office, with a promise to make mass deportations a priority.

Gurpreet intended to make an asylum claim based on threats he said he had received in India, but - in line with an executive order from Trump to turn people away without granting them asylum hearings - he said he was removed without his case ever being considered.

About 3,700 Indians were sent back on charter and commercial flights during President Biden's tenure, but recent images of detainees in chains under the Trump istration have sparked outrage in India.

US Border Patrol released the images in an online video with a bombastic choral soundtrack and the warning: "If you cross illegally, you will be removed."

US Border Force A still from a video produced by US Border Force showing migrants in casual clothes and warm coats with their legs chained together, walking up a ramp onto a military aircraft. The image is cropped to conceal their faces and to highlight the chains around their ankles.US Border Force
A video showing shackled migrants being deported sparked outrage in Gurpreet's home of India

"We sat in handcuffs and shackles for more than 40 hours. Even women were bound the same way. Only the children were free," Gurpreet told the BBC back in India. "We weren't allowed to stand up. If we wanted to use the toilet, we were escorted by US forces, and just one of our handcuffs was taken off."

Opposition parties protested in parliament, saying Indian deportees were given "inhuman and degrading treatment". "There's a lot of talk about how Prime Minister Modi and Mr Trump are good friends. Then why did Mr Modi allow this":[]}