'Reeling under trauma': Harjit Kaur recounts harrowing details of 'inhumane' deportation by US
PTC News Desk: Harjit Kaur, a 73-year-old Sikh woman who had been living in California, United States for over 30 years has now been deported to India. While recounting the harrowing details about her detention period, she said she is still reeling from the "inhuman treatment" she received at the hands of US authorities.
In an exclusive conversation with PTC News from her sister's house in Mohali, where she arrived late Thursday night, Kaur said that she is traumatised following the inhumane treatment she was subjected to by the immigration officials, adding that her family is planning to come and visit her in India.
While narrating her ordeal, Harjit Kaur, seemingly exhausted and in sheer despair said, "They made me sit and sign the papers and said that i am under arrest, however i refused to sign in absence of my lawyer, to which they said doesn't matter as they have my fingerprints."
"I was confined in a small room which was unbearably cold," she continued. "Neither i was able to sit nor lay down. Next morning i was shifted to a detention facility in Georgia. I was not even provided proper food. They didn’t even allow me to take my medicines. No medicines were given. Other people there told me they had been kept for months or even years. One Punjabi lady had been there for a year, others for four months, some for eight months."
Harjit Kaur further said that despite suffering from migraine, blood pressure and several other ailments, she was denied medicines prompting her lawyer to intervene. She was even fed ice instead of water for medicines.
Meanwhile, her family members described her return very unfortunate with initial uncertainty over her arrival and lack of proper information by the US authorities.
They said that no clear information was provided that when and where the plane would land. They waited at different airports—Delhi, Amritsar, and Mumbai—because no one was told where the flight would arrive. Finally, through indirect information, they learned she was arriving.
Even though Harjit Kaur has arrived in India, some serious questions have been raised over inhumane treatment that prevails in the detention centers in the United States. Kaur, despite residing in the US for over three decades, paying timely taxed and appearing once in every six months as part of protocol, she was deported after being subjected to brutality and torture at detention facilities at the hands of US authorities.
- PTC NEWS
