Canada removed 3,323 Indian nationals in the first six months of 2026, putting the figure on course to exceed the country’s annual record for Indian removals if the current pace continues, news agency PTI reported. The figures highlight that Ottawa is tightening its control over immigration and taking stern action against overstays and non-compliance.
The first-half figure is already nearly 88 per cent of the 3,779 Indian nationals removed during all of 2025 — the highest annual figure in the CBSA’s data for 2020-25. If the current pace continues, 2026 could set a new annual record.
The development comes as Ottawa is tightening its immigration system and reportedly reducing temporary residents, including foreign workers and international students.
The CBSA does not break down the 2026 inadmissibility categories by nationality in the published table. Across all nationalities, the largest category of enforced removals in the first six months of 2026 involved non-compliance by refugee claimants, followed by non-compliance among non-claimants. Other grounds included criminality, misrepresentation and organised crime.
The CBSA figures for 2026 also reveal that Indian nationals have emerged as the largest group of foreign nationals who were deported from Canada, followed by Mexicans, with 1,573 deportations, PTI reported.
In the last five years, Mexico topped the list of foreign nationals being deported consecutively, with India ranked in second place during the same period.
It was in 2020 that India was ranked number one, with 1,424 Indian nationals being deported from Canada. In 2021, 603 Indians were deported from Canada, followed by 786 in 2022. In 2023, the number rose to 1,132, and further to 2,004 in 2024, according to CBSA data.
The CBSA also lists 7,669 Indian nationals in its “removal in progress inventory”, the largest such group among all nationalities. The inventory refers to cases where removal action is in progress; it should not be read as a list of people who will necessarily be deported immediately.
Canada’s deportation figure of Indian nationals from January to June 2026, which stands at 3,323, is also more than two-and-a-half times the number of Indians deported by the United States to India in the same period.
Ministry of External Affairs data last month revealed that 1,273 Indian nationals were deported from America between January 1 and July 22.
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