The Trump administration recently informed India that it is targeting for deportation more than 270 Indian nationals living in the United States illegally, according to India’s foreign minister.
The Indian government has asked for further information on the 270-name list from the United States before allowing their deportation, Sushma Swaraj said during a question period in the upper house of India’s Parliament on Thursday.
“Until we verify the nationalities of these people, how do we believe the claims in the list?” Swaraj said. “We have asked the U.S. government for more information and told them that we will give an emergency certificate for their deportation only after establishing their Indian nationalities.”
There is growing concern in India over treatment of its citizens in the United States after a high-profile shooting of an Indian computer engineer in Olathe, Kan., in February, and other suspected hate crimes.
There was no immediate comment from the Trump administration on the purported deportation list.
The number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States born in India increased by about 130,000 between 2009 to 2014 to an estimated 500,000 people, according to a September report from the Pew Research Center in Washington.
Many of these unauthorized immigrants from India and elsewhere in Asia arrived with legal status and overstayed their visas, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics, the report’s authors noted.
In a separate study, Pew researchers found that an estimated 12,885 Indian citizens had overstayed their visas in fiscal year 2015, far fewer than some other countries including Canada and Mexico.
Thousands of Indian computer engineers come to the United States every year on high skilled temporary H-1B visas, a program that has also been targeted for reform.
The Trump administration has moved aggressively to fulfill the president’s campaign promises on immigration since he took office in January, announcing plans to build a wall and increasing enforcement actions against illegal immigrants.
