External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Thursday briefed Parliament on the recent deportation of 104 illegal Indian immigrants from the United States. Clarifying that the deportation process “was not a new one” and had been ongoing for several years, Jaishankar informed Rajya Sabha that a total of 15,668 illegal Indian immigrants have been deported to India from the US since 2009.

A couple of days ago, a US military plane carrying 104 deported Indians landed in Amritsar. Rejecting all the opposition’s charges, the minister also addressed the “handcuff” charges, Jaishankar said deportations by the US are organised and executed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities and “the standard operating procedure for deportations by aircraft used by ICE that is effective from 2012, provides for the use of restraints”.