A 73-year-old woman who spent over three decades living in the United States has been deported to India.
Harjit Kaur, who had repeatedly sought asylum in the US without success, was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on September 8, prompting outrage among the Sikh community. She had moved to California in 1991 with her two sons to escape political unrest in Punjab and lived and worked in the US while pursuing several unsuccessful asylum applications, reports BBC.
Her lawyer, Deepak Ahluwalia, criticized ICE’s handling of Kaur’s detention, calling it “unacceptable.” He said she had no criminal record but was held in a Georgia facility from September 19 before being deported on September 22, never getting a chance to visit her home or properly say goodbye to friends and family, it said.
Ahluwalia also claimed that Kaur spent 60–70 hours without a bed, sleeping on the floor despite having double knee replacements. He alleged she was given ice to swallow her medication and denied food she could eat, with guards blaming her for not eating the sandwiches provided.
ICE stated that Kaur had “exhausted decades of due process,” noting that an immigration judge had ordered her removal in 2005. The agency added: “Harjit Kaur has filed multiple appeals all the way up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and lost each time. Now that she has exhausted all legal remedies, ICE is enforcing US law and the orders by the judge; she will not waste any more US tax dollars.”
Kaur, who lived in Hercules in the San Francisco Bay Area, worked for 20 years as a sari-store seamstress and paid taxes. Asylum seekers in the US are legally allowed to work while their claims are being processed, the report also said.
After arriving in Delhi, she told Times of India: “After living for so long in the US, you are suddenly detained and deported this way; it is better to die than to face this.” She had continued to stay in the US after her appeals were rejected because she lacked the documents to return to India, and was required to check in with immigration authorities every six months. Her arrest in San Francisco during one such check-in triggered protests among supporters, it added.
Kaur’s case comes amid a broader crackdown on immigration under the Donald Trump administration, targeting alleged illegal immigrants. Each year, hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers arrive at US borders, with over 3.7 million cases currently pending in immigration courts. While Trump has vowed to deport the “worst of the worst,” critics say immigrants without criminal records who follow due process are also being affected, the report concluded.