Asked water to take medicine, given ice: Harjit Kaur's ordeal on US deportation flight
Kaur's lawyer claims she was mistreated during her detention, kept in shackles, and not allowed to contact her family before being sent back to India.
The lawyer of Harjit Kaur from Punjab, who was deported after living 33 years in US, has levelled allegations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials regarding the inhuman treatment of the 73-year-old.
Kaur was allegedly denied food and medicine during the detention and given only a “plate of ice” when she asked for water.
When Kaur explained that she could not be able to eat ice because she had dentures, the detention guards replied, “That's your fault.”
Kaur's lawyer Deepak Ahluwalia, said in an Instagram post that his client was suddenly taken from Bakersfield to Los Angeles on Sunday night and put on a chartered flight by ICE. The flight came to New Delhi on Tuesday, September 23, through Georgia.
In a video posted on Instagram by Ahluwalia, he talked about how his client was mistreated by ICE for days and was treated harshly on her journey back to India.
He said that she was kept in shackles for a prolonged period and confined in bare concrete cells. He also claimed that Kaur was not even “allowed to say goodbye" to her family in the US.
A plate of ice, made to sleep on the floor
During her detention in Georgia, over a period of approximately 60 to 70 hours, she was not given a bed. She was sharing a temporary holding room with multiple other people. There was just a concrete bench. She was made to sleep on the floor with a blanket.
Ahluwalia noted that his client was unable to get up when she lied down as she had undergone knee replacement surgeries on both her knees. When she asked for food, so that she could take her medicines, her requests were left ignored.
Although she was given a ‘cheese sandwich’, when Kaur asked for water so that she could take her medication, she was given a plate of ice. When she explained that she had dentures and she could not eat it, the guard told her, “That's your fault.”
Requests for meeting her attorney also kept being ignored, Ahluwalia added.
Lawyer questions detention
The detention facility also did not even allow anyone to meet Kaur, and additionally refused to confirm or deny if Kaur was detained in that particular facility at all.
Ahluwalia claimed to make a few urgent request calls to the facility on Saturday, the replies of which arrived only on Wednesday, that too stating that he would be allowed to talk to her in another two days, whereas Kaur is already back home now.
He said Kaur’s family had arranged her travel documents and requested that she be sent back on a commercial flight, HT reported earlier.
Also read | ‘Not ever allowed to say goodbye': What Harjit Kaur's lawyer said on her deportation from US after 33 years
“We had just two demands: first, to send her back on a commercial flight, and second, to let her meet her family for a few hours. But they refused to listen,” the post added.
As per a report by Berkeleyside, a nonprofit news portal, Kaur lived in the East Bay region in Northern California for more than 30 years. The Sikh woman was detained after ICE officials asked her to come to San Francisco to turn in additional paperwork regarding her stay in the country.
Lived in US for 33 years
Harjit Kaur, who lived in the United States for the last 33 years, was detained by ICE officials after a routine check-in earlier this month.
According to a report in ABC7News, Kaur was an undocumented immigrant in the US. However, this was due to her asylum case being denied. Kaur came to the United States in 1992 from India as a single mother with two sons.
In 2012, the US denied her asylum, but since then, the woman has “faithfully reported” to ICE in San Francisco every six months for more than 13 years, her daughter-in-law Manji Kaur told the US-based news channel.
“ICE assured her she could remain in the United States under supervision with work permits until they could receive her travel documents," the report added.
Kaur had worked for over two decades at a local Indian clothing store, the report added.
