Modi faces fire for accepting Trump’s deportees

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Should Prime Minister Narendra Modi speak out against the U.S. policy of deporting Indian illegal aliens back to India? Opposition leaders and media pundits are pressuring him to do so, but that would be a mistake.

Mr. Modi is right to cooperate with the Trump administration’s effort to deport illegal aliens, including the estimated 725,000 undocumented Indians living in the U.S. During his visit to the White House earlier this month, Mr.

Modi told reporters that “those who stay in other countries illegally do not have any legal right to be there." He added that India was “ready to take them back." Mr. Modi’s forthright position on a sensitive political issue requires courage. Since the first deportation flight to India in President Trump’s second term—a U.S.

military plane carrying 104 deportees—touched down on Feb. 5 in the northern city of Amritsar, opposition politicians have excoriated the prime minister for his alleged insensitivity to migrant suffering. “Indians deserve Dignity and Humanity, NOT Handcuffs," tweeted Rahul Gandhi of the opposition Congress Party.

Earlier this month, officials were forced to adjourn both houses of Parliament amid raucous sloganeering. In Punjab, protesting politicians burned an effigy of Mr. Modi.

Stories of disappointed deportees, some of whom had paid human traffickers tens of thousands of dollars to be smuggled into the U.S., flooded the media. After a prominent Tamil magazine published a cartoon of a meekly handcuffed and shackled Mr. Modi seated beside a laughing Mr.

Trump, the Indian government blocked its website. Mr. Modi may find the current imbroglio unpleasant, but picking a fight with Mr.