Chandigarh: Haryana Minister Anil Vij on Thursday said US President Donald Trump has not made any mistake in deporting illegal immigrants and asserted that a country has every right to expel those who enter its territory illegally.
His remark came after 104 illegal Indian immigrants from various states were deported in a US military aircraft that landed at the Amritsar airport on Wednesday. This was the first such batch of Indians deported by the Trump government as part of a crackdown it resolved to carry out when it was sworn in last month.
"If a person goes to another country illegally, then that nation has every right to expel them. And Trump did not make any mistake," said Vij in response to Punjab's NRI Affairs Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal's appeal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to speak with the US president regarding deportation.
"I say take a cue from it. Lakhs of people are illegal in this country... They were born somewhere else, but we feed them. They should be sent back to their respective countries," he said.
Of the 104 deportees who arrived at the Amritsar airport on Wednesday, 33 each were from Haryana and Gujarat, 30 from Punjab, three each from Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, and two from Chandigarh.
Punjab minister Dhaliwal on Wednesday sought the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to speak to his "friend" US President Trump regarding the deportation of Indians.
