Harjit Kaur’s story paints a harrowing picture of how long-term immigrants facing deportation are treated in the United States. Kaur, a 71-year-old Indian national, had lived in the U.S. for over three decades, settling in the San Francisco Bay Area after moving there with her two sons following her husband’s death. For more than 20 years, she worked at a saree store in Berkeley and built her life around her children and grandchildren, who are all U.S. residents. However, despite holding a valid work permit and paying taxes, she had been under deportation proceedings since 2012 due to not having a passport, a situation that escalated only recently.
According to Kaur, she had been attending mandatory immigration check-ins every six months without incident for years. But on September 8, 2024, during one such routine visit to an immigration office in San Francisco, she was suddenly taken into custody without any explanation. “I lived in the USA for more than 30 years, but I was deported without even being told the reason,” she said tearfully, adding that she was not allowed to meet her family even though they had travel tickets to see her.
Kaur described her detention in graphic detail. She said she was placed in a cold room at the Mesa Verde detention centre in Bakersfield without a proper blanket and was given food she could not eat as a vegetarian. She claimed her requests for suitable meals went ignored, leaving her distressed and weak. On the morning of September 10, she was reportedly handcuffed, her feet tied, and transported from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, before being put on an ICE-chartered flight carrying 132 other deportees. The flight went via Georgia and Armenia before landing in New Delhi.
“I was handcuffed, and my feet were tied. They did not give me proper food because I am vegetarian,” Kaur recounted. “After living there for so long, you are suddenly detained and deported this way. It is better to die than to face this. Look at my feet, they are swollen like cow dung cakes. I neither got medicine nor am I able to walk.” Her lawyer, Deepak Ahluwalia, corroborated parts of her account on Instagram, saying she was denied water for her medicines, given ice instead, and mistreated by guards. Ahluwalia has said a complaint will be filed over the treatment Kaur endured during her detention and deportation.
Kaur’s deportation highlights the increasingly strict enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in recent years, particularly under policies introduced during and after Donald Trump’s presidency. In her view, these policies have created an atmosphere of fear and harsh treatment even for long-term residents who have complied with legal requirements for decades. “All this is happening after Trump came to power there,” she said, reflecting on how quickly her life changed from stable to uncertain.
Now back in India, Kaur is distraught, separated from her children and grandchildren in the U.S. and facing health challenges in an unfamiliar environment. She has expressed a desperate desire to return to the U.S. to be with her family, but the legal and diplomatic hurdles appear daunting. Her case has attracted attention as an example of how elderly, long-term immigrants can be caught in bureaucratic and legal webs, suffering emotionally and physically even after years of lawful work and tax contributions in the U.S.
