India is willing to take back its citizens residing illegally in the United States, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said after meeting with a top official in President Donald Trump’s new administration.
Jaishankar’s remarks came following a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on Tuesday, a day after Trump’s inauguration.
Trump signed a series of executive orders this week aimed at curbing illegal immigration and expediting the deportation of millions of immigrants.
Jaishankar said India is open to repatriating undocumented Indians and is verifying those in the U.S. who could be deported.
“We want Indian talent and Indian skills to have the maximum opportunity at the global level. At the same time, we are also very firmly opposed to illegal mobility and illegal migration,” Jaishankar told Indian reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
“With every country, and the U.S. is no exception, we have always taken the view that if any of our citizens are here illegally, and if we are sure that they are our citizens, we have always been open to their legitimate return to India,” he said.
Jaishankar was responding to reports that India is working with the Trump administration on the deportation of about 18,000 Indians who are undocumented or have overstayed their visas.
Rubio “emphasized the Trump administration’s desire to work with India to advance economic ties and address concerns related to irregular migration,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement after Tuesday’s meeting.
India, the world’s fifth-largest economy, boasts rapid GDP growth, but hundreds of thousands of its citizens leave the country annually in search of better opportunities abroad.
While its diaspora spans the globe, the United States remains a top destination. The most recent U.S. census showed the Indian-origin population grew by 50% to 4.8 million between 2010 and 2020, while more than a third of the nearly 1.3 million Indian students studying abroad in 2022 were in the United States.
