Explained: Why so many Indians live in the US illegally

The US has identified around 18,000 illegal Indian immigrants for removal as it embarks on mass deportations. Banasree Purkayastha explains that the problem of undocumented migrants could cast a shadow over India-US ties, and especially impact how legal migration is perceived

Deporting illegal Indian immigrants

EVEN AS PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s first executive actions in office targeted illegal immigration into the US, including putting an end to birthright citizenship which is seen as largely affecting visa holders from India, came the news that New Delhi has agreed to take back around 18,000 Indians living in the US illegally. Per a Bloomberg report, India and US have identified around 18,000 Indian migrants in the US for deportation. On Tuesday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio met external affairs minister S Jaishankar in Washington, where Rubio emphasised the Trump administration’s desire to advance economic ties and address concerns related to irregular migration. While India did not confirm the deportation figure, it said it was working with the US government to tackle the problem of illegal immigration. “We have always taken the view that if there are any of our citizens, who are not here legally, if we are sure that they are our citizens, we have always been open to their legitimate return to India,” Jaishankar said at a press conference in Washington DC on Wednesday.

Balancing migration, mobility and trade

THE INITIATIVE IS being seen as the Indian government’s willingness to cooperate with the new US administration, protect legal migration on work and student visas and avoid a potential trade conflict. “As part of India-US cooperation on migration and mobility, both sides are engaged in a process to deter illegal migration. This is being done to create more avenues for legal migration from India to the US,” Randhir Jaiswal, external affairs ministry spokesperson told Bloomberg. Trump has earlier threatened high trade tariffs for India as part of his America-first policy.While US-India bilateral trade hit $120 billion in FY24, India’s surplus makes it a target for retaliatory measures. The average tariff gap, or difference between Indian and US duties, is 11.9% across over 3,000 products, much higher than that in the case of China or Mexico.

How illegal migrants live in the US

PER A 2024 Pew Research report, 725,000 undocumented Indians are in the US, though they accounted for only 3% of all unlawful crossings encountered by US border patrol officials in fiscal 2024, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. A US Department of Homeland Security report estimated some 220,000 unauthorised Indian immigrants resided in the US as of 2022. A majority of these undocumented immigrants live in Florida, Texas, California, New York, Georgia, Maryland and North Carolina working in gas stations, grocery stores, motels and restaurants, many of them owned by Indians. Most of them live a “quasi-legal” existence while they wait for years for courts to decide on their asylum claims. For most of these unskilled migrants, the US represents an escape from poverty as they are able to send monthly remittances of around `2 lakh which help them clear debts and improve their families’ living standards back home.

The treacherous donkey route

MOST OF THE illegal immigrants from India are inhabitants of Gujarat and Punjab, taking a long, circuitous route called the “donkey route”, hopping across continents to reach US shores. Traffickers take desperate emigrants from New Delhi and Mumbai to the United Arab Emirates on tourist visas, from where they go through several transit points in Latin America such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Guatemala to reach the US-Mexico border. The other route is via European Union’s Schengen Area from where they again take the Latin America route, travelling in shipping containers and boats, and even on foot, armed with forged documents and fake backstories to make asylum claims if they reach their destinations. The entire journey can take years and costs `50 lakh to `85 lakh. More recently, the Canada border emerged as an easy entry point.  Close to 22% of the Canada border illegal crossings are by Indians. In 2023, 30,010 Indians were stopped at the Canada border and 41,770 at the Mexico border.

Detention and deportation data

DATA FROM THE US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in December 2024 had revealed that 17,940 Indians are among the 1.445 million individuals with final orders of removal. Over 5000 Indians were under detention in fiscal 2024. ICE had deported over 270,000 immigrants to 192 countries, including 1,529 to India, in 2024, the highest since 2014. In Trump’s first term, 1,616 Indians were deported, with the number rising to 2,312 in 2020, an increase of around 43%. Under the Biden administration, the number dropped to 292 in 2021 and 276 in 2022 and in 2023 increased to 370 in 2023. In October 2024, a chartered flight brought back more than 100 undocumented Indians from the US. In 2014, ICE removed 315,943 immigrants from 192 countries, and the highest number during Trump’s first term was 267,258 in 2019. Around 14 million undocumented immigrants are estimated to be in the US, though Trump has claimed it could be as high as 25 million.