At 6.30 am on Thursday, a domestic flight carrying 33 Gujaratis, including seven children, who were deported from the United States on Wednesday touched down at Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Airport.
Thirteen from Gandhinagar, ten from Mehsana, four from Patan district, and one each from Ahmedabad city, Ahmedabad rural, Vadodara rural, Petlad in Anand district, Ankleshwar in Bharuch district, and Juna Deesa in Banaskantha were among the thirty-three Gujarati immigrants.
Police units from each of these districts had gathered at the airport by five in the morning. The deportees were picked up by the police and taken to the district police headquarters in their respective jurisdictions to provide statements. According to officials, the deportees would then be sent home.
Notably, the deportees’ relatives were not present at the airport since the police had told them that they would be escorted home.
Alongside the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), which was already stationed at the airport, the Ahmedabad city police had sent out escort officers to handle the situation.
At 6:57 a.m., the first deportees left the airport facility through Arrival Gate-6, accompanied by at least two police officers, if not more. Many of the deportees were visibly terrified as they ran towards the waiting police vans, which started ferrying them out as soon as all of the deportees left the facility. The deportees also hid their faces and refused to speak to the journalists who had gathered in huge numbers outside the airport.
A large number of the deportees wore masks, and those who didn’t covered their faces with handkerchiefs. Little to no luggage was carried by any of the deportees.
Due to a lack of police officers to accompany the deportees to their vehicles, there was a 40-minute pause after the first few families departed until a man was brought out at 8 a.m.
The process came to a dramatic halt at 8:09 a.m. when the police tried to accompany several deportees out a side entrance, causing a throng. The last group of deportees, six to ten individuals from Mehsana, were then led by the police from the Gate-6 arrival door into the waiting vans, which thereafter left for North Gujarat. The deportees were part of 104 deported Indians on a US military plane that touched down in Amritsar, Punjab, on Wednesday. Under the Trump 2.0 government, they were the first group of illegal Indian immigrants to be deported from the United States.
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