Modi says India ‘fully prepared’ to take back Indians living in US without legal status – live | US news
Modi says India is ‘fully prepared’ to take back any Indians living in the US without legal status
Standing across from Donald Trump in the White House, Indian’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was asked by an Indian reporter to comment on the US “push to curb illegal immigration”.
According to a simultaneous translation, he replied: “We are of the opinion that anybody who enters another country illegally has absolutely no right to be in that country.”
“Any verified Indian who is in the US illegally,” Modi added, “we are fully prepared to take them back.”
The prime minister did, however, express sympathy for children who were brought to the US and others “lured by big dreams”.
Last week, a US military plane carrying 104 deported Indian migrants arrived in India, as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.
That was, however, just a tiny sliver of the estimated 725,000 Indians who were living in the US without legal status in 2022, according to a Pew Research Center study.
India, Pew found, was the third largest source of unauthorized immigrants in the US, after Mexico and El Salvador.
As of November, the Indian Express reported, there were 20,407 undocumented Indians either facing final removal orders or are currently in detention centers of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
Indian outlets were appalled by the fact that Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, whose wife is an Indian American, had advocated the re-hiring of a young engineer working for Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” who had posted racist comments about Indians, including “normalize Indian hate”, on the social media platform X.
Key events
Trump announces extradition of accused Mumbai terror attack plotter
At the start of his just completed White House news conference with Narendra Modi, Donald Trump said that Tahawwur Rana, a Canadian of Pakistani descent, would be sent to India to face charges related to the terrorist attack in Mumbai on 26 November 2008.
“I am pleased to announce that my administration has approved the extradition of one of the plotters, and one of the very evil people of the world, having to do with the horrific 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, to face justice in India”, Trump said.
Rana is a former military doctor who served in the Pakistani army. He moved to Canada in 1997 and became an immigration service businessman. After gaining Canadian citizenship in 2001, Rana moved to Chicago.
Rana was sentenced to 14 years in US federal prison in 2013 for providing material support to overseas terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani group that killed more than 160 people in Mumbai in 2008.
In 2011, jurors convicted Rana of providing support for Lashkar-e-Taiba, and for supporting a plot to attack a Danish newspaper that printed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005. The Denmark plot was never carried out. Rana was cleared of the more serious charge of helping to plot the Mumbai attacks. The government’s main witness was David Coleman Headley, who had pleaded guilty to laying the groundwork for the Mumbai attacks.
The US supreme court had turned down Rana’s appeal against extradition last month.
An Associated Press reporter was just blocked from attending the Trump-Modi news conference in the White House, continuing the administration’s attempt to strong-arm the global news collective into changing its decision to not call the Gulf of Mexico by the new name Trump has given it: the Gulf of America.
In a statement, AP executive editor Julie Pace called the move, “a deeply troubling escalation of the administration’s continued efforts to punish the Associated Press for its editorial decisions”.
“It is a plain violation of the first amendment … an incredible disservice to the billions of people who rely on the Associated Press for nonpartisan news,” Pace wrote.
One odd aspect of the ban is that it seems to apply to AP reporters but not AP photographers, who continue to be allowed to cover Trump in the White House.
Here, for instance, is an AP photo of Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday, where he appears to have ordered his staff to keep a drawing of the “Gulf of America” on an easel behind his desk, so that it appears in news photographs, including those captured and distributed by the Associated Press.
Here is live video of Donald Trump and Narendra Modi – they’re speaking at a news conference in the White House:
Maya Yang
Protesters against Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown marched across downtown Manhattan, with at least one arrest being made by NYPD.
As they made their way through New York’s Soho neighborhood, the marchers were flanked by a heavy presence of NYPD officers on either side.
Approximately 100 protesters marched, beating drums and chanting in solidarity with the migrant communities, with a police presence that appeared to be at least double that size.
Several protesters are holding a sign that reads “to get our neighbors, you have to get through us.”
Several individuals wearing blue jerseys that say “ACLU New York City protest monitor” are also walking along with the demonstrators.
Trump falsely claims top federal prosecutor in New York, who refused to drop charges against mayor Eric Adams, was fired
During a brief exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, alongside Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, Donald Trump was asked about the dramatic resignation of Danielle Sassoon, the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York.
Sassoon, a conservative lawyer and a member of the Federalist Society who once clerked for supreme court justice Antonin Scalia, offered her resignation on Wednesday in a scathing letter to Pam Bondi, the new attorney general, in which she explained that she could not, in good conscience, comply with an order from acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, to drop corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams, in return for the mayor’s help in executing Trump’s immigration policies.
Trump told reporters that Sassoon did not resign, but was fired.
That is not true. Multiple news organizations, including ABC News, obtained copies of Bove’s letter accepting Sassoon’s resignation on Thursday.
“The reasons advanced by Mr Bove for dismissing the indictment are not ones I can in good faith defend as in the public interest and as consistent with the principles of impartiality and fairness that guide my decision-making,” Sassoon wrote in her letter.
“Mr Bove proposes dismissing the charges against Adams in return for his assistance in enforcing the federal immigration laws, analogizing to the prisoner exchange in which the United States freed notorious Russian arms dealer Victor Bout in return for an American prisoner in Russia.”
She added: “Such an exchange with Adams violates commonsense beliefs in the equal administration of justice, the Justice Manual, and the Rules of Professional Conduct. Adams has argued in substance – and Mr Bove appears prepared to concede – that Adams should receive leniency for federal crimes solely because he occupies an important public position and can use that position to assist in the administration’s policy priorities.”
Maya Yang
Protesters have started chanting and beating drums in Foley Square as part of the rally against Donald Trump’s immigration crackdowns.
“Deny, defend, depose, all Nazis got to go,” they chanted.
Other chants include “every gender, every race, punch a Nazi in the face”.
Some protesters held signs that read “Chinga la migra” or “Fuck ice.”
Maya Yang
A handful of protestors donning green bandanas have gathered at Foley Square in downtown Manhattan ahead of an immigration rally in response to Donald Trump’s anti-immigration crackdowns.
Some are holding handwritten signs that say “Melt Ice” – a reference to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Another person is holding a sign with a message to New York City’s mayor Eric Adams who has in recent months taken on a hardened stance against immigration.
“Immigrants are not your get out of jail card!” the sign read, in reference to Adams’ own federal charges of corruption which the newest Trump-appointed justice department has ordered prosecutors to drop.
Another protester held up a sign that read “No family separation!”
Trump hails ‘great friendship’ with Modi
Donald Trump is hosting at the White House the Indian PM Narendra Modi, who has heaped praise on him in hopes of avoiding the additional tariffs that the new administration has slapped on other countries in its opening weeks.
Trump and Modi greeted each with a hug in the lobby of the West Wing before meeting on Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office. Trump called Modi a “great friend” hours after signing an order to increase tariffs to match the tax rates that other countries charge on imports, which affects American trading partners around the world, including India.
“We have great friendship, he and I and our countries, and I think it’s only going to get closer,” Trump said.
The Indian leader was looking to improve relations with Washington and the West overall, which have been frosty lately after Modi refused to condemn Russia for its war on Ukraine.
“The world had this thinking that India somehow is a neutral country in this whole process,” Modi said, praising Trump for speaking with Russia and Ukraine’s leaders on Wednesday. “But this is not true. India has a side, and that side is of peace.”
Trump meets Modi at White House
Donald Trump and Narendra Modi are meeting in the Oval Office. You can follow it live here:
Speaking to reporters earlier in the Oval office, Donald Trump appeared to cast doubt on the fact that Senator Mitch McConnell had polio as a child.
McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, mentioned his childhood illness to explain his vote against Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine activist, as health secretary. “I’m a survivor of childhood polio”, McConnell said. “In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world. I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures”.
Asked about McConnell’s vote in the Oval office before Kennedy’s swearing-in, Trump first cast doubt on the senator’s mental competence, and then scoffed at the idea that he had survived polio.
When Kaitlin Collins of CNN said, “he had polio, obviously,” Trump replied, “I don’t know anything about, ‘He had polio’. He had polio” in a sarcastic tone that implied McConnell might have been lying about having had the illness in his youth.
New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has rejected a request from Louisiana to extradite a doctor who was charged there with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor, the Associated Press reports.
The case against Dr Maggie Carpenter, a family medicine doctor in New Paltz, New York, who was indicted on criminal charges by a grand jury in Louisiana last month after prescribing the medication in a telemedicine appointment, sets up a potential court battle over laws that protect physicians who prescribe such medications to patients in states with bans.
Hochul, a Democrat, told reporters she will not honor Louisiana’s request to arrest and send the doctor to Louisiana after she was charged with violating the southern state’s strict anti-abortion law.
“I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana,” Hochul said at a news conference in Manhattan. “Not now, not ever.”
She also said she sent out a notice to law enforcement in New York that instructed them to not cooperate with out-of-state warrants for such charges.
Pills have become the most common method of abortion in the US and are at the epicenter of political and legal fights over abortion access following the US supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.
