Harjit Kaur, 71, who was recently deported from the United States, said she was handcuffed, had her feet tied, and served food she could not eat as a vegetarian during her detention. She said the experience was distressing and expressed a desire to reunite with her family in the US.Harjit Kaur said she has lived in the US since 1991, but her deportation proceedings, which began in 2012 due to the lack of a passport, escalated recently. “I don’t know the reason. I used to go for my attendance every six months. On September 8, I was arrested. I was not told any reason and wasn’t allowed to meet my family, even though they had tickets to see me,” she said.Despite holding a work permit and other necessary documents, Kaur was detained with several other women. “When I was arrested, three people were around me and locked me in a cold room. In the morning, I was taken to another location, handcuffed, and my feet were tied,” she said.
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She added that the food provided was unsuitable for her as a vegetarian, though she was not handcuffed during the flight back to India. “My children and grandchildren are all in the US. I want to go back. The past year has been very difficult,” she said, blaming recent US policies under Donald Trump for the strict treatment of deportees, including truck drivers.Kaur recounted being kept in custody in Bakersfield for 8–10 days before being taken to Arizona and then flown to Delhi. “Their behaviour was very bad. My children over there will do something; I cannot do anything,” she added.She added that the food provided was unsuitable for her as a vegetarian, though she was not handcuffed during the flight back to India. “My children and grandchildren are all in the US. I want to go back. The past year has been very difficult,” she said, blaming recent US policies under Donald Trump for the strict treatment of deportees, including truck drivers.Kaur recounted being kept in custody in Bakersfield for 8–10 days before being taken to Arizona and then flown to Delhi. “Their behaviour was very bad. My children over there will do something; I cannot do anything,” she added.Kaur, who moved to the US with her two sons around 33 years ago after her husband’s death, had lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than two decades, working at a saree store in Berkeley until health issues forced her to quit earlier this year. She said she had been under deportation proceedings since 2012, but continued routine check-ins with immigration authorities, attending her appointments every six months.On September 8, during one such check-in in San Francisco, Kaur was taken into custody and moved to the Mesa Verde detention centre in Bakersfield. Around 2 am on September 10, she was reportedly taken from Bakersfield to Los Angeles in handcuffs before being flown via Georgia and Armenia to New Delhi on an ICE-chartered flight carrying 132 other deportees.After landing in Delhi, Kaur broke down and said, “After living there for so long, you are suddenly detained and deported this way. It is better to die than to face this. Look at my feet, they are swollen like cow dung cakes. I neither got medicine nor am I able to walk.”Earlier, her US-based lawyer, Deepak Ahluwalia, revealed additional details on Instagram, saying Kaur was denied water for medicine, given ice instead, and mistreated by guards during her detention. Ahluwalia added that a separate complaint will be filed over the way she was treated in custody and during deportation.
