Harjit Kaur’s ice stop arouses the Sikh community

The visiting room of the Mesa Verde Ice Processing Center in Bakersfield, California, is small, noisy and congested. When Harjit Kaur’s family arrived to see her, they could barely hear her – and the first words they caught broken them.

“She said,” I prefer to die than to be in this establishment. May God take me just now “”, recalls his distraught daughter-in-law, Manjit Kaur.

Harjit Kaur, 73, who applied without success for asylum in the United States and lives in California for more than three decades, was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Applications (ICE) on September 8, causing shocks and sympathy of the Sikh community through the state and beyond.

Harjit Kaur had placed several asylum calls over the years that have been rejected, the last refusal in 2012, said his lawyer.

Since then, he had been asked to introduce himself to the immigration authorities every six months. She was arrested in San Francisco when she went to get a recording.

This comes in the midst of a broader repression of the Donald Trump administration on immigration, and in particular illegal immigrants alleged in the United States.

The problem is sensitive – the country is struggling with how to manage the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers arriving at its borders each year. More than 3.7 million asylum cases are pending in the immigration courts. An increased budget for the application of immigration means that ice is now the Federal Application for the most funded law.

Trump said he wanted to expel the “worst of the worst”, but criticism say that immigrants without a criminal record following a regular procedure have also been targeted.

“More than 70% of people arrested by ice have no criminal conviction,” said California state senator, Jesse Arreguin, in a statement demanding the release of Harjit Kaur. “Now they literally go after the peaceful grandmothers. This shameful act affects our communities.”

Member of the US Congress John Garamendi, who represents the Californian district where Harjit Kaur lives, submitted a request to the ice for his release.

“The decision of this administration to have a 73 -year -old woman – a respected member of the community without a criminal record who has faithfully reported to ice every six months for more than 13 years – is one more example of the poorly placed priorities in the application of Trump immigration,” said a spokesperson.

In a statement sent by email, Ice told the BBC that Harjit Kaur had “exhausted decades of regular procedure” and that an immigration judge had ordered his withdrawal in 2005.

“Harjit Kaur has filed several calls to the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and lost each time. Now that she has exhausted all legal appeals, ice applies US law and judge’s orders; she will no longer waste dollars of American taxpayers,” he added.

Harjit Kaur came to the United States in 1991 with his two minor sons after the death of her husband, his lawyer Deepak Ahluwalia told the BBC. His daughter-in-law Manjit Kaur said that the young widow wanted to protect her sons and escape political turbulence in the state of Punjab in India at the time.

Over the next three decades, she has occupied modest jobs to raise her sons, one of which is now an American citizen. Its five grandchildren are also American citizens.

Harjit Kaur, who lives in Hercules City in the San Francisco Bay region, worked as a seamstress in a Sari store in the past two decades and pays his taxes. The United States asylum candidates are authorized to live, work and pay taxes legally once their complaint officially filed and underway.

Even after the rejection of his last call for asylum in 2012, his employment permit was renewed each year.

After rejection, her expulsion seemed imminent, but she did not have the right documents to go to India.

Indian missions in the United States emit emergency certificates – a one -way travel document – to the Indians of invalid status to allow them to return. This would require verification of the origin and identity of Harjit Kaur in Punjab through photos, the verification of parents or knowledge or in search of old files, which would take at least a few weeks.

More than a decade for rejection, neither Harjit Kaur nor the officials of American immigration have been able to obtain a travel license for her. Manjit Kaur said he had visited the Indian consulate in San Francisco in 2013 for that but had not succeeded. The Consul General of India in San Francisco K Srikar Reddy told the BBC that they had no Harjit Kaur file for travel documents in India.

Ice did not answer the question of why he did not obtain a travel permit in the past 13 years.

Mr. Ahluwalia said he was following the Indian consulate for documents that “ice has not been able to obtain in the past 13 years”. The consulate says that they “facilitate any necessary consular assistance”.

Harjit Kaur’s family, on the other hand, say they never questioned her expulsion and should not have been detained.

“Provide us on travel documents and she is ready to leave,” said Manjit Kaur. “She had even packed her suitcases in 2012.”

Currently, their immediate concern is to get it out of the detention center.

“You can put an ankle instructor from him. We can check with immigration when you wish,” said Manjit Kaur. “Simply get it out of the establishment and when you provide us with travel documents, it self-reproduces in India.”

Her lawyer said that when he met Harjit Kaur on September 15, she hadn’t received her regular medication. He alleged that she had been “dragged by the guards”, “denied a chair or a bed” and that she had been “forced to sit on the ground” for hours in a detention cell despite the replacement of the double knee.

He also alleged that she had “explicitly refused water” and had not provided vegetarian meals for the first six days.

Ice did not answer specific questions about these allegations, but had previously declared to the BBC Punjabi that “it is a long -standing policy that as soon as someone arrives in police custody, they have complete health care”.

Inmates have access to “medical appointments and emergency care 24 hours a day” and no one is refused essential care at any time during detention, “he added.

Kulvinder Singh Pannu, president of the Gurdwara committee at the Sikh Center in the San Francisco Bay region, said Bibi Harjit (a respectful way of referring to an elderly woman Punjabi) is well appreciated in the region.

“She has always helped people in our community with everything she had financially,” he said.

“A few hundred people have proven to be alone to protest against his arrest,” he said, referring to agitation on September 12 outside the Sikh temple in California.

While uncertainty continues, the supporters of Harjit Kaur plan to hold more demonstrations, including in other American cities, many saying that they are affected by his fate.

A single mother, Harjit Kaur had formed roots and deep relations in the United States in the past 30 years. His parents and siblings in India are no longer alive, explains Mr. Ahluwalia.

“She has no one, no house, no land to return.”

Follow BBC News India on Instagram,, YouTube, Twitter And Facebook.