Harjit Kaur, a 73-year-old Sikh woman (Image credits: ANI)
NEW DELHI: Harjit Kaur, a 73-year-old Sikh woman who spent 30 years in the United States, shared her ordeal with the ICE after she was arrested and deported to India.“Their behaviour was very bad. I was arrested on 8 September… I was arrested and taken to Bakersfield, where I stayed for 8-10 days. I was then taken to Arizona, from where I was sent to Delhi…,” she said while talking to ANI.Kaur said she was moved to a holding facility in Georgia on September 19 and deported to India on September 22, never getting to visit her US home or bid a proper farewell to family and friends. Reflecting on her situation, she said, “My children over there will do something. I cannot do anything.”She added that she spent 60-70 hours in detention without a bed, forced to sleep on the floor despite double knee replacements.
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She was given ice to take medication and denied food she could eat, with guards blaming her for her inability to eat the provided sandwich. Kaur added that she was given chips and cookies in food.She has filed multiple appeals up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, all of which were unsuccessful.Also read: Harjit Kaur deportation: India responds to return of 73-year-old Sikh woman; over 2,400 repatriated so far this yearKaur moved to California in 1991 with her two young sons and lived and worked in the US while making several unsuccessful asylum applications. During the weekly media briefing, the ministry of external affairs (MEA) highlighted that 2,417 Indian nationals have been deported or repatriated from the United States since January 2025. MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, as quoted by ANI, “The number of deportations that have happened from the United States since January; 2417 Indian nationals are deported or repatriated from the United States… We want to promote legal pathways of migration. India stands against illegal migration.”Jaiswal further emphasised the government’s stance on legal migration: “Whenever there is a person who does not possess a legal status in any country and he or she is referred to us with documents, and if there are claims that he or she is an Indian national, we do the background check, confirm the nationality and then we are in a position to take them back… This has been happening with deportations from the United States.“
