KATHMANDU, Sept 5: A total of 19 Nepali nationals deported from the United States for not having official documents arrived at Tribhuvan International Airport on Thursday.
A chartered Omni Air International flight carrying the deportees, which was scheduled to arrive on Wednesday, landed a day later on Thursday evening at around 7:00 PM after experiencing technical issues. Of the 19 deportees, 17 are men and 2 are women.
Anjan Neupane, Senior Immigration Officer at TIA, confirmed their arrival. “All 19 Nepalis safely landed at the airport,” Neupane said. With this, the total number of Nepali immigrants deported from the US this year has reached 234.
75 arrive in Kathmandu on chartered flight as US deports highes...
Earlier, the Department of Immigration, quoting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that a total of 37 Nepalis were to be deported by September 3. Later, they were informed that the flight would be delayed due to technical issues.
Before arriving in Kathmandu, the plane first landed in Pakistan to drop off Pakistani deportees. It is expected to return to the US after dropping off Bangladeshi deportees in Dhaka.
Most of the deported individuals are believed to have entered the US by paying large sums of money to organized human trafficking networks. These deportees had entered the US after June 24, 2015, and had already received removal orders.
On August 21, a US federal appeals court sided with the Trump administration, allowing it to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for migrants from Nepal and two other countries. TPS is granted by the Secretary of Homeland Security to prevent deportation and allow work permits when returning to a migrant’s home country is considered unsafe due to disasters, political instability, or other dangers.
This ruling has put many Nepalis—who entered the US after the devastating 2015 earthquake—at risk of deportation. Around 7,000 Nepalis, whose TPS expired on August 5, are now vulnerable to removal.
Most of the deportees are from three western districts of Nepal: Dang, Rukum East, and Rukum West. So far, people from 28 districts have been deported. These individuals often reach the US through human trafficking networks and are forced to travel through several countries, trekking for days through jungles and dangerous routes, often encountering rebel groups along the way.
In a bid to stop the mass deportation of such individuals, a US district court on August 30 blocked the Trump administration from significantly expanding a procedure that allows authorities to swiftly deport migrants without a court hearing. The ruling, however, has not deterred the deportation of this latest group of Nepalis.
The US has been continuously deporting Nepali citizens residing illegally in recent years. A total of 35 were deported in 2021, 22 in 2022, 24 in 2023, and 52 in 2024.
