Washington, Feb 14: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that India will take back any verified Indian illegal migrant in the US and will also crack down on human traffickers who exploit vulnerable people.

India and the US “have always been of the same opinion, and that any verified Indian who is in the US illegally, we are fully prepared to take them back to India”, he said on Thursday at a news conference after bilateral talks with President Donald Trump.

The US sent back about 100 illegal migrants from India on a military plane to Amritsar this month. India reportedly has agreed to take back 18,000 illegal migrants.

PM Modi said that he wanted to go beyond repatriation and fight the human traffickers who exploit “the children of very ordinary families” luring them with “big dreams and big promises”.

“A lot of them are brought in without them knowing why they're going to the country,” he said. “And basically, the young, vulnerable, poor people of India are fooled into coming over as illegal immigrants,” PM Modi added.

The Prime Minister called for a joint fight against the menace of human trafficking.

“As far as the US and India are concerned, I think what we should do is make an effort to make sure that we uproot them (traffickers) from within the system so that we can reduce or remove human trafficking,” he said.

As a general principle, he said that illegal migrants have no right to be in a country. It is not a question only about India, but “even globally you can talk about this issue, and we are of the opinion that anybody who enters another country illegally, they have absolutely no right to be in that country,” he said.

India also has a problem with illegal migrants coming in from neighbouring countries.

--IANS
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