Over 300 unauthorized Indian migrants in Mexico deported to New Delhi

In what was described as an unprecedented Transatlantic deportation, a total of 311 people from India, including a woman, have been deported by Mexican immigration authorities from Toluca to New Delhi.

The National Immigration Institute said in a statement late Oct. 16 that it had deported the migrants who had been detained by immigration officials in eight Mexican states, including in southern Mexico where many Indian migrants enter the country, hoping to transit to the U.S. border, before being concentrated at a detention center in the Gulf state of Veracruz in preparation for their deportation.

The Indian nationals did not have “a condition of regular stay in the country”, according to the National Migration Institute.

According to news reports, Mexico has stepped up its immigration enforcement in recent months under pressure from the United States. The government has deployed thousands of National Guard agents along the major migration routes.

“It is unprecedented in INM’s history – in either form or the number of people – for a transatlantic air transport like the one carried out on this day,” INM said in a statement.

Reuters news agency quoted Caitlyn Yates, a research coordinator at IBI Consultants who has studied increasing numbers of U.S.-bound Asian and African migrants arriving in Mexico, as saying that the backlog of migrants in southern Mexico has grown as officials have stopped issuing permits for them to cross the country.

In June attention focused on a little known problem – rise in the number of people from India crossing the U.S Mexico border illegally – when the body of a six-year old Indian girl was found 17 miles west of Lukeville, Arizona after she reportedly crossed the U.S.-Mexico border as part of a group.

News reports said Kaur had reportedly been traveling with four others who were dropped near the international boundary by human smugglers. They were told, according to a U.S. Border Patrol press release, to cross into the U.S. from the Arizona border in the “dangerous and austere location.”

An increase in Indian nationals and other migrants from outside the Western Hemisphere illegally crossing the US-Mexico border has been “an emerging trend for the past few years,” a Department of Homeland Security official told CNN.

Jessica Bolter, a research assistant at the Migration Policy Institute who tracks migration patterns at the border, told CNN that there has been a pretty significant increase in general in migrants coming from other continents, not just India. “With this girl from India, there has not been confirmation that she was traveling in a family, but it is likely,” Bolter said.

“This trend of increased family migration is echoing not just throughout Central America, but also beyond even the Americas. It indicates the message that families can enter the US easily is spreading.”

In an interview with India Abroad Sangeeta Pratap, professor of economics at Hunter College, New York, who was awarded the Banamex Prize, one of Mexico’s highest awards that annually recognizes the best research, analysis, and solutions to the economic problems in Mexico in 2017, said a little over 2,000 Indians live in Mexico legally, most of them working in senior positions at Indian companies and also in academia.

There are quite a few Indian companies in IT and pharmaceuticals, and one in steel manufacturing in Mexico. The main ones are Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Ranbaxy, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories and Arcelor-Mittal.

“The main reasons why these Indian companies set up shop in Mexico was to take advantage of the proximity of the U.S. so some amount of exports could be turned over to the U.S.,” Pratap told this correspondent earlier.