A Rohingya refugee living in India can now be detained and deported without ever appearing before a court of law. There is no guaranteed hearing, no clear standard of proof and no statutory protection against being sent back to danger. This is not an unintended consequence of the new law.
The Immigration and Foreigners Act, 2025 claims to repeal four colonial-era statutes in favour of a single, consolidated framework. The more important question, however, is whether this repeal is substantive or merely formal. In practice, the law repackages these enactments while leaving largely untouched the colonial logic that has long structured India’s immigration system.
Why this law, and why now?
The enactment of this law coincides with a broader global hardening of immigration regimes, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States, where migration is increasingly framed as a security threat rather than as a human reality shaped by conflict, inequality, survival and the search for opportunity. This raises an uncomfortable possibility: is India aligning itself with an emerging anti-immigration orthodoxy of the Global North?
This concern is underscored by recent political rhetoric surrounding the deportation of undocumented Indian migrants from the US. Earlier this year, Indian nationals were deported in handcuffs under conditions widely criticised as inhumane. Yet, responding in Parliament, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar characterised these deportations as routine rather than as rights violations. The absence of any substantive objection to either the treatment of migrants or the logic underpinning their removal reflects an acceptance of the West’s migration framework that reduces mobility to illegality and normalises heavy handed enforcement. It is this same logic that resurfaces in India’s own immigration law.
Executive power and the erosion of due process
Under the new law, decisions about who is “legal,” “illegal,” or a “foreigner” are made not by courts of law but by Foreigners Tribunals, quasi-judicial bodies constituted and administratively controlled by the executive. When the same state machinery that identifies a person as an “illegal migrant” also controls the forum that adjudicates that claim, independent scrutiny is sharply limited.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
