A fourth batch of illegal immigrants from India deported by the US landed in Delhi today, officials said.

They flew back to India via Panama, officials said. Of the 12, four went home to Punjab’s Amritsar, officials said.

The first round of deportation had taken place on February 5, when a US military plane transported 104 Indians to Amritsar. 

Amid criticism, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had said the Centre had been engaging with the US to ensure the deportees are not mistreated. He said the US’ deportation of illegal migrants is not a new development and has been going on for years.

Nearly 300 immigrants deported under US President Donald Trump’s policies are being held in a Panama hotel as the authorities work to return them to their home countries.

With 40 per cent refusing voluntary repatriation, UN agencies are seeking alternative destinations. The situation has raised concerns over their confinement, as Panama acts as a transit hub while the US covers the costs.

President Trump has defended the mass deportation of undocumented foreign nationals, saying his administration is “draining the swamp by sending home fraudsters, cheaters, globalists and deep state bureaucrats.”

He has made mass deportation of undocumented migrants a key policy.

As of 2022, unauthorised immigrants represented 3.3 per cent of the total US population, and 23 per cent of the foreign-born population, according to Pew Research Centre.

The first group of Indians deported by the US earlier arrived in Panama after President Jose Raul Mulino agreed his country would become a “bridge” country for deportees.

The Trump administration is also directing immigration agents to track down hundreds of thousands of migrant children who entered the US without their parents, expanding the US President’s mass deportation effort, according to an internal memo reviewed by news agency Reuters.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo outlines an unprecedented push to find migrant children who crossed the border illegally as unaccompanied minors. It lays out four phases of implementation, beginning with a planning phase on January 27, though it did not provide a start date for enforcement operations, Reuters reported.

More than six lakh immigrant children have crossed the US-Mexico border without a parent or legal guardian since 2019, according to government data, as the number of migrants caught crossing illegally reached record levels.