Deportation Uproar in India Threatens Trump’s Trade and H-1B Talks

India’s politics are in an uproar after President Donald Trump brusquely repatriated a tiny share of the almost 1 million Indian migrants who have illegally sneaked into American communities.

The uproar complicates fast-track trade negotiations where major business groups are pushing Trump to accept more Indian white-collar H-1B migrants in a swap for Indian acceptance of more U.S. exports. For example, India is removing tariffs that reduce motorcycle sales by the investor-owned and troubled Harley-Davidson company.

Trump’s first repatriation flight to India on February 4 carried 104 illegal migrants who were shackled to their seats as they were flown back home in a military cargo aircraft. The videos of the drop-off caused much TV drama and outrage among Indian nationalists.

We … shall not tolerate the humiliation of Indian nationals,” tweeted Mallikarjun Kharge, who leads the opposition party in the upper house of India’s parliament, which is called the Rajya Sabha. He added that President Narendra Modi’s]government “must come out with a detailed statement on the deportation and why did we not send our own planes to bring back the Indians, with dignity and respect, instead of a military plane landing on our soil.”

The Indian uproar mirrors the uproar in Colombia when the United States sent a group of Colombian illegal migrants home via a military cargo aircraft.

But the Indian uproar is just a small hint of the future drama that may come if Trump keeps his pro-American migration promises in the face of India’s economic plan to export millions more blue-collar and white-collar Indians to the United States.

Since 1990, India’s economic strategy of migration has been very successful for India — and for Wall Street.

The strategy has spiked Wall Street’s profits and stock values by replacing millions of well-paid American white-collar professionals with cheaper Indian H-1B workers — who eagerly work as accountants, lab technicians, managers, salesmen, medical technicians, software writers, and recruiters in the hope of staying in the United States and of getting U.S. legal status for their families and descendants.

The flood of legalized H-1B, L-1, OPT, and J-1 white-collar Indians has also carried a huge number of other Indians into America. They include E-3 visa franchise operators and hotel managers, and almost 1 million illegal workers who take low-wage jobs in the expanding array of Indian-run businesses within the U.S. consumer economy.

At least 4 million people from India now live in the United States and send an ocean of money back to India. In 2024, for example, Indians working in the United States sent roughly $120 billion in remittances back to their homeland. A large share of that migrant money was taxed and used by the government to buy products from American companies, including energy, services, and aircraft.

The migration strategy has also created political support in the United States for more Indian migration. For example, the Indian anger at Trump’s brusque deportation action was also shared by some Americans with Indian ancestry:

But the flood of legal and illegal Indians is also fueling U.S. opposition from American college graduates displaced from jobs by Indian migrants.

That rising white-collar opposition is a political problem for Trump, who was elected on a pro-American, anti-migration platform. Moreover, Trump will need all the white-collar votes he can get in the November 2026 midterm elections, especially in the swing districts where those U.S. graduates can readily see how networked, self-serving Indians are replacing them, their peers, and their adult children.

The escalating mutual anger complicates the high-stakes negotiations between Trump and Modi, who are slated to meet next week at the White House. They will meet on Feb. 12 and 13 to talk about the entwined issues of trade and migration.

Trump and Modi are friendly to each other — but Trump wants more trade, while Modi wants more migration.

Meanwhile, international business groups are pressing India to reduce tariffs on American goods — such as energy, food, and aircraft — to help convince Trump to allow the continued flow of lower-wage Indian migrants into U.S. jobs.

“We at USIBC have dozens of top CEOs ready to engage with both the Prime Minister and the President,” Atul Keshap, president of the US-India Business Council (USIBC), told an Indian TV station on February 7. The USIBC is a spin-off of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and it includes many companies that use India’s subordinate H-1B workers to replace plain-speaking American professionals.

Keshap said many CEOs are eager to participate in the D.C. talks:

These are CEOs from top companies in e-commerce, financial services, banking, defence, new economy, digital economy, and life sciences. We’ve compiled a list of 30 CEOs ready to change their plans and fly in to be part of this. And that list is growing every minute.

Bloomberg reported on February 4:

In a matter of weeks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has handed Trump a series of concessions on core Trump issues from trade to migration. The latest came over the weekend when India overhauled its own restrictive tariff regime to cut a wide range of duties — including those on large-engine motorcycles like those made by Harley-Davidson, an iconic American export that Trump has long said gets unfair treatment in India.

On January 21, Bloomberg reported:

The US has identified some 18,000 undocumented Indian migrants to be sent back home, for which India will verify and start the process of deportation, according to people familiar with the matter. The figure could be much higher than that, though, given that it’s unclear how many undocumented Indian migrants live in the US, the people added, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private.

…

In return for its cooperation, India hopes that the Trump administration would protect legal immigration channels used by its citizens to enter the US such as student visas and the H-1B program for skilled workers. Indian citizens accounted for almost three-fourths of the 386,000 H-1B visas granted in 2023, according to official data.

“With a jobs shortage back home, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has signed migration agreements with an array of countries in recent years, including Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Israel and others,” Bloomberg reported.

American business groups and weapons companies are also claiming that China’s growth requires more trade — and more migration — with India.

For decades, multiple United States administrations have helped India’s economic strategy and deported very few Indians.

In January, for example, President Joe Biden’s ambassador to India boasted:

Since becoming Ambassador, we’ve increased our visas by more than 60 percent, eliminated wait times for all visa types, except for first-time visitor visas … For a second year in a row, we issued more than one million nonimmigrant visas, including a record number of visitor visas … more than five million Indians currently hold a [multi-year, multi-use] United States visa.

But Trump’s deputies are sticking to his pro-American campaign promises.

“This department will no longer undertake any activities that facilitate or encourage [illegal immigration],” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote in a memo to the top officials in the department, according to Real Clear Politics.

The task is “the most consequential issue of our time,” Rubio wrote, according to a January 21 report from Real Clear Politics.