Amid an upsurge of deportation of unauthorized Indians in the United States under the new Trump administration, a new study suggests an unprecedented surge in the number of Indians caught at the border during the previous Biden administration.
Formerly a small group among encountered migrants—the number of Indians apprehended skyrocketed by 40 times in just four years, from around 1,000 in FY 2020 to a peak of 43,000 in 2023, according to the new study by Abby Budiman and Devesh Kapur from Johns Hopkins University.
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This sharp rise in apprehensions was closely followed by a notable increase in asylum requests from Indian nationals, particularly among Punjabi speakers, the study says.
Despite these trends, official U.S government estimates show no obvious or systematic rise in the overall population of unauthorized Indian immigrants in the country between FY 2020 and 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.
In terms of migrant removals, the number of Indian nationals repatriated from the U.S. by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) significantly increased between FY 2023 and 2024, rising from fewer than 400 to over 1,500.
However, the highest peak in removals actually occurred in 2020, when nearly 2,300 individuals were removed—one year preceding the surge in Indian apprehensions at the border.
Estimated in-country overstay rates for Indian visa holders have also remained consistently low since 2016, rarely exceeding 2%. Meanwhile the estimated number of active Indian recipients under DACA have steadily fallen to just above 1,600 in 2024.
Examining what forces may have driven these recent unprecedented changes in Indian migration patterns to the U.S., Budiman and Kapur say “It’s tempting to interpret the rise in asylum claims filed by Indian nationals as a consequence of democratic backsliding and increasing authoritarianism in India. However, correlation is not causation.”
U.S. data suggests that asylum seekers are primarily Punjabi and Gujarati—ethnic groups from some of India’s wealthiest states who are more likely capable of bearing the high costs of migrating to the West through unauthorized channels, the study notes.
This contrasts with individuals from less prosperous regions or marginalized groups most affected by current national policies. Disenfranchised communities notably absent from asylum claims include Indian Muslims, individuals from Scheduled Caste populations, and those residing in conflict-ridden areas such as the Adivasi (tribal) belt and the Kashmir region, Budiman and Kapur note.
Ham-handed policies of the Indian government targeting Khalistani activists in the West gave further credence to those from Punjab alleging persecution by Indian authorities, according to the researchers.
The drivers of migration are rooted in both the sending and receiving countries, in this case India and in the U.S, they say noting “Both Gujarat and Punjab have tradition of seeking better lives overseas, with large number of migrants going to the UK and U.S., as well as Canada and Australia.”
“The remittances (India received an estimated $120 billion in remittances in 2023) from employment overseas, visually apparent in more opulent homes, lead more to try to escape not poverty but ‘relative deprivation,’ fearing limited economic prospects in India,” according to Budiman and Kapur.
At the same time a full industry of agents and brokers facilitating this illegal migration sprang up in India, the study noted suggesting India’s Home Ministry looked the other way since this issue likely because the issue of illegal migration is much more a burden for receiving than sending countries.
“It is no surprise that the beginning of Joe Biden’s Presidency in 2020 coincided with the aforementioned significant rise in migrant apprehensions at U.S. borders from all nationalities, with a widespread perception that the U.S. was more open, especially in contrast to the draconian policies of Donald Trump’s administration,” Budiman and Kapur say.
“By the time the Biden administration woke up to the domestic political costs of the large migrant surge by end 2023, enacting stronger border control policies, it was too late for the Democrats,” the researchers suggest.
Meanwhile a host of diploma mills in Canada were only too happy to accept dubious international students, 50,000 of whom did not show up after entering Canada (20,000 from India alone), heading South to the U.S. border, a cheaper and much less arduous entryway than from the Southern border.
“By comparison, the Trump administration has made it unequivocally clear that the U.S. is closed to newcomers during his second term,” Budiman and Kapur noted.
With this reversal in approach, it is highly likely that the number of asylum authorization and temporary legal status approved for migrants who were initially apprehended at the border will decline, the researchers say.
By sending back deportees in handcuffs on U.S army planes, it is signaling its deterrence strategy in highly publicized ways. However, the understandable anger in India at the cruel treatment of its citizens is bound to rile relations between the two countries if this practice continues, they say.
As for the Indian government’s response to this new development, it has few options, according to Budiman and Kapur. “It’s hard to defend illegal migrants and the larger goal of maintaining relations with the Trump administration means that it will swallow its pride and largely accept the hardline stance.”
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For instance, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s team has explicitly agreed to facilitate the repatriation of 18,000 unauthorized Indian immigrants from the U.S. back to India. However, the complete deportation of all unauthorized Indian migrants is a pie-in-the-sky objective, largely due to the immense logistical challenges and time constraints involved in such a drastic undertaking, the researchers say.
“Nonetheless we expect unauthorized migration to the U.S. to drop sharply, and from India even more so,” Budiman and Kapur say.