Inside India’s deportation policy: timelines to speed up deportation of illegal migrants, holding centres with 10-ft.-high barbed wire boundary

The government has formulated a new deportation policy under which all States have been asked to set up a special task force in each district to “detect, identify and deport/send back illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar”, and provide a monthly status report on foreigners who are missing or overstaying their visas.

States have been asked to operationalise “holding centres/camps” with a 10-feet-high boundary ringed with barbed wires, to restrict the movement of such undocumented migrants till they are deported or “sent back” to Bangladesh or Myanmar, according to the policy framed by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).