DHAKA, Jan 22, 2025 (BSS)- The United States has visibly launched a tough campaign against illegal migrants in line with newly elected President Donald Trump’s declaration, with foreign relation experts saying this could affect as well the Bangladeshis living there illegally.
    
“We are getting reports that a drive has been launched across the United States to track down the illegal migrants. We should not expect Bangladeshis will be spared,” foreign relation expert and former Bangladesh ambassador to the United States Humayun Kabir told BSS.

Kabir, who now heads Bangladesh Enterprises Institute (BEI), a think tank, said the Trump administration has planned to scrap a law that allows US citizenship through one’s birth right, leading to dislocation of many people from the United States.

He said the children who were born in the United States when their parents or mothers were on tours or living there illegally, were now exposed to uncertainty under the proposed plan, though the policy was likely to face legal challenges.

“I think President Trump’s administration will ask the respective governments to take back their nationals who are living in the US without proper papers,” he said.

The former diplomat said according to information he gathered many people of 160 countries were living illegally in the United States and pointed out the media reports that India by now agreed to take back 18,000 of their nationals staying in the US.

Another foreign relation expert and former ambassador Mahfuzur Rahman, however, said Trump actually devised a stricter immigration policy targeting the South of Latin American immigrants but since the policy is not country-specific, it would affect migrants of other countries including Bangladeshis.

Rahman, who previously served as the director general of the American Desk in the foreign ministry, said during his previous tenure Trump persuaded an anti-immigration policy, and during his second tenure, it will be more stringent which appeared from his inauguration speech.

Rahman said the new policy, however, could simultaneously make it easier for Bangladesh and other countries to get extradited the people from the United States.

According to unofficial or unconfirmed reports over a million Bangladeshis live in the United States and one tenth of them are undocumented.

Bangladeshi origin US ICT expert Afzal Hossain, however, said the history suggests the country welcomed top brains and talents from across the globe to contribute the superpower.

He said Trump too would not deviate from that policy but the new administration would put in efforts to drive out the others, whom they may consider redundant.

Ambassador Kabir also echoed Hossain saying Trump already hinted he would acknowledge the youths graduated from the US universities.

According to US-based TV channel CNN the US-Mexico border is effectively closed off to migrants seeking asylum in the United States within hours of President Donald Trump taking office, an extraordinary departure from previous protocols that has left many concerned migrants in limbo.

The reports said the campaign against illegal migrants was underway scaring thousands of people including Bangladeshis while the US law enforcement agencies detained many of them visibly as part of a deportation attempt.  

President Trump has signed several executive orders making sweeping changes to the immigration system while immigration was one of his top issues during the presidential election campaign.