After living in the United States for 33 years, 73-year-old Harjeet Kaur, a native of Punjab, was deported to India earlier this month.
Now residing at her sister’s home in Mohali, Kaur has alleged that she faced inhumane treatment during her detention and deportation process, raising serious questions about America’s human rights record.
Kaur revealed that she was arrested on September 8. From there, she was first taken to Fresno, then held in Bakersfield for over a week, and later transferred to Arizona, from where she was placed on a flight to Delhi.
Recalling the ordeal, she said: I am a vegetarian, but they gave me beef to eat. I couldn’t touch the food. On the deportation flight, all I got was a packet of chips and two cookies.
No medicines, no proper food. It was an 18-19-hour journey, and I received no medical support at all.”
Kaur also said she was deported along with 132 others, including 15 Colombian citizens. Most of them were handcuffed and shackled, but due to her age and fragile health, she was spared. “Still, the conditions were degrading,” she said.
Her lawyer, Deepak Ahluwalia, sharply criticized the treatment meted out to her. He said that before deportation, she was not even allowed to meet her family.
“She was kept in a temporary detention center in Georgia, where she had to sleep on the floor with just a blanket for 60–70 hours.
She has undergone double knee replacement surgery, which made it extremely painful for her to sit and get up. She wasn’t given a chance to bathe either,” he said.
Kaur, who had gone to the US in 1992 as a single mother with two sons, had been fighting for asylum. Though her plea was rejected in 2012, she continued to report regularly—every six months—to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in San Francisco for over 13 years.
Her daughter-in-law, Manjit Kaur, said: “She followed all the rules faithfully, but in the end, she was deported without even being allowed a last meeting with her family.”
Despite her ordeal, Harjeet Kaur expressed her desire to return to America, saying that her “entire family is there” and her future depends on the decisions of her children.
Global Outrage Over “Human Rights Hypocrisy”
Several social and human rights organizations have expressed shock and dismay over the incident, calling it a glaring example of double standards by a country that frequently presents itself as a global champion of democracy and human rights.
“These are inhuman conditions for deportees. The United States, which claims to broker peace across the world and lectures other nations on humanitarian values, is itself violating the very principles it preaches,” one activist group said.
Analysts added that the treatment of deportees like Harjeet Kaur exposes the contradictions in the present American regime’s policies. While Washington positions itself as a defender of vulnerable groups worldwide, it has failed to uphold basic dignity for people under its own custody.
“The world is watching these double standards,” one observer noted, warning that such actions erode America’s moral credibility on the global stage.
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