A second United States military aircraft carrying 119 deported Indian citizens landed at the Amritsar airport on Saturday night, reported The Indian Express.

The aircraft carried 67 persons from Punjab, 33 from Haryana, eight from Gujarat, three from Uttar Pradesh, two each from Rajasthan, Goa, and Maharashtra, and one each from Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.

On February 5, the first flight with 104 deported Indian citizens arrived in Amritsar from the US. Of them, 33 each were from Gujarat and Haryana, 30 from Punjab, three from Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, and two from Chandigarh.

A third flight carrying deportees is expected to land on Sunday.

The deportations are part of a wider crackdown by US President Donald Trump’s administration.

In the wake of the deportations, the Punjab Police has formed a Special Investigation Team to inquire into undocumented migration and human trafficking.

Earlier on Saturday, Congress leader P Chidambaram said that “all eyes will be on the US aircraft which will land today in Amritsar bringing back illegal immigrants”.

In a post on X, he asked: “Will the deportees be handcuffed and their legs tied with ropes? It is a test for Indian diplomacy.”

Chidambaram was referring to reports of the mistreatment of the first flight of deportees by US authorities, including that their hands and legs were cuffed. Opposition parties too had flagged the mistreatment.

On February 6, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told Parliament that the 104 Indian citizens who were deported from the US were shackled in keeping with past procedure

“The standard operating procedure for deportation by aircraft used by [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement], that has been effective from 2012, provides for the use of restraints,” the minister had told the Rajya Sabha. He said that New Delhi was informed by US authorities “that women and children are not restrained”.

Indian authorities are engaging with the US to ensure that “the returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight”, he added.

Meanwhile, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Friday alleged a “conspiracy to defame Punjab and Punjabis” ahead of the scheduled arrival in Amritsar of the second flight of deportees from the US.

“The Ministry of External Affairs should state the criteria based on which Amritsar was selected to land the aircraft,” Mann said. “You select Amritsar to defame Punjab…Amritsar is being chosen deliberately to portray that only Punjabis are illegal migrants.”

He demanded that the Union government should get the plane’s route changed so that it could land in Delhi, Ghaziabad’s Hindon airbase, or Ahmedabad.

In January, Jaishankar said that India was open to the “legitimate return” of undocumented Indian migrants and was working with US authorities to verify the identities of the individuals.

A 2022 US Department of Homeland Security report estimated that 220,000 undocumented Indian migrants were living in the country. More than 1,100 Indians were deported in the 12 months leading up to October 2024.