Deported from US, Punjab’s migrants now turn to Spain

The three, all from Bagrian village in Punjab, were among the 104 Indians deported on a US military aircraft on February 5, 2025.

Chandigarh: Three men from a village in Punjab’s Kapurthala district who were flown back from the US in handcuffs and leg chains last year have left India again, this time for Spain.

The three, all from Bagrian village in the Bholath area, were among the 104 Indians deported on a US military aircraft that landed in Amritsar on February 5, 2025. It was the first such flight after the US began its crackdown on illegal immigration.

Their families told The Indian Express (IE) that the men are now in Spain on what they called “temporary visas” and are working on farms and in restaurants.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has said 3,567 Indian nationals were deported from the US in 2025. Another 1,273 were sent back between January 1 and July 22 this year, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters in July.

The experience of Bagrian shows that the deportations have not checked the outflow from Punjab. They have only changed where it is headed.

Second attempt, bigger debt

Maninder Singh, 42, worked as an assistant at a clinic near the village before he set out for the US in January 2025. He had taken a loan of Rs 30 lakh for the journey. He was held by US Border Patrol agents while crossing over from Mexico and was back in Bagrian within a month.

With the loan still unpaid, he left for Spain in November 2025. He now works as a farmhand near Barcelona, his wife Amandeep Kaur, 32, told IE. The family mortgaged its house to pay for the second trip.

“He calls regularly from Spain and says he will soon start sending money,” she said.

The couple, from the Mazhabi Sikh community, have two daughters aged four and two. Amandeep said her husband went abroad so that the girls could grow up with the comforts that the better-off Jat Sikh families in the village enjoy.

Until money starts coming in, the family is getting by on the old-age pension of Maninder’s parents, free ration and the assistance Amandeep and her mother-in-law get under the state’s Mukh Mantri Mawan Dheeyan Satkar Yojana.

Amandeep, a graduate of Lovely Professional University, said she cannot think of taking up a job as she has to run the house and look after her ageing in-laws.

No land left, say deportee’s family

Sukhraj, another Bagrian youth on the February 2025 flight, had been caught trying to scale the border wall from Mexico. He spent 20 days in detention before he was sent back and was among the first deportees to tell the media they had been shackled on the flight.

He is now in Spain. His parents, Jasbir Singh and Baljit Kaur, said the agent sent him by air to Madrid. They said they did not know how much was paid. He recently found work at a restaurant, his mother said.

The family has been down this road before. In 2000, Jasbir spent Rs 4 lakh to go to Greece, where he worked as a farmhand for four years. He returned home depressed and is still on medication, his wife said.

Their elder son, Gurpreet, left for Germany in 2012, when he was 18, after the family paid an agent Rs 9 lakh. He worked at a restaurant for nine years, repaid the loan and applied for permanent residence. Then, early one morning, German police escorted him to the airport. The family says he was never told why. He now keeps two cows and sells milk in the village.

“What choice do we have? We have no land left,” Jasbir told IE.

He said the family had sold its small plot to pay for the trips abroad. Leasing land was risky, private jobs paid little and drugs had made things worse, he said. Abroad, at least, wages were certain.

Job offer turned down

The third deportee, Tarjit Singh, 32, was offered a security guard’s job at Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana at Rs 15,000 a month after his family approached a local politician, his mother Nirmal Kaur said. The state government had promised to rehabilitate deportees.

He chose Spain instead, leaving earlier this year. His younger brother, Dharamjit, 30, has been working at a restaurant in Spain for eight years and has not come home since, waiting for his papers.

“It’s his choice,” Nirmal Kaur said of Tarjit. “We have very little land.”

Why the youth are choosing Spain 

A travel agency representative, who did not want to be named, told IE that a US deportation does not bar a person from getting a Schengen visa for Europe, but can sharply lower the chances. Another agent said some of those who went to Europe may have taken the illegal route.

That agent said a Spanish tourist visa could be arranged for around Rs 8-10 lakh, far less than the cost of reaching the US or Canada. The stay is later extended, a work permit is sought and many move on to Portugal or Italy, he said.

Spain has also eased the path for migrants already in the country. In April, Madrid opened an extraordinary regularisation drive under which undocumented migrants who had been in Spain before January 1, 2026, and had lived there continuously for at least five months could apply for residence and work permits. The application window closed on June 30.

A village built on remittances

Bagrian has about 1,600 residents and almost every household has one or two members abroad, IEreported. Many of its houses, with glass-and-wood fronts and ornate gates, have been built on money sent home.

Sarpanch Charanjit Singh, who himself worked in Doha for eight years, said most youngsters who leave have studied only up to Class 10 or 12 and lack the qualifications or skills to land a good job at home. In early 2025, he had told The Tribune that roughly half the village – some 500 to 600 people – had settled abroad.

Not all go illegally. Ajaib Singh, a retired Punjab Police sub-inspector, said his two daughters moved to Canada after clearing the IELTS, one about nine years ago and the other five years ago. He would rather his son, a student at DAV University in Jalandhar, stay in Punjab. 

“But if he is destined to settle abroad, he will,” he said.