Kulvinder Kaur, a resident of New Delhi, India, had tried to call her husband in the US several times before. After two weeks of the connection not going through, she was consumed by anxiety, she said from her home in Hoshiarpur, in the northern Indian state of Punjab.
“I was really concerned about what might have happened to him if he had been murdered or robbed there. I was concerned if I ever saw him again because he is the father of my children, Kaur said.
Then, she saw a news telecast: President Donald Trump’s administration was deporting batches of illegal Indian immigrants.
Harvinder Singh, 40, was one of the 104 Indians who had entered the country without authorization over the past few years. On Wednesday, as Trump rebuffed a crucial election promise that brought him back to power in January, her husband was deported.
In search of a better life for his family back in Punjab, Singh had made a desperate journey to the US, through jungles, rivers, and seas, crossing rivers and rivers. This week, like many other detainees, including women, Singh had his hands and legs cuffed during the 40-hour journey to Amritsar, a city in northern India.
The visuals of Indian citizens – shackled in chains – parading towards a US military aircraft, for its farthest-ever journey as a deportation flight, have prompted anger in India. On Thursday, hours after the deportees landed, opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi of the Congress Party, staged a protest wearing handcuffs outside the parliament in New Delhi.
The outcry over Indian nationals’ treatment by US authorities comes days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled White House visit on February 13 and raises questions about Modi’s relationship with Trump. If Trump is indeed Modi’s friend, as both leaders claim, why isn’t New Delhi able to stop him from steps that could complicate ties?
The answer, say experts, is a difficult balancing act that the Modi government believes it must manage.
“The issue with the Trump administration is there are a number of issues on the table, including tariffs”, said Harsh Pant, a geopolitics analyst at New Delhi-based think tank, Observer Research Foundation, referring to Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on Indian imports. “So, where do you give in and where do you negotiate?
” In order to make Trump happy, who is transactional by nature, India does not want to raise the stakes too much]on the immigration issue] and is absorbing the costs, “Pant told Al Jazeera”. There are also a lot of difficulties.
The “Crashess side of America”
His administration began military detention flights to deport undocumented immigrants after Trump declared a national emergency regarding immigration. At least six planeloads of immigrants have been flown to Latin America, causing unrest in Colombia and Brazil. After it became clear that Brazilian nationals were chained and handcuffed while being deported, the government of Brazil protested against the “degrading treatment of passengers on the flight.”
India though, has not said it has protested similar treatment meted out to its nationals. Of the 104 Indians on the plane that landed on Wednesday, several were children – they, however, are not known to have been shackled.
As of 2022, India ranked third, after Mexico and El Salvador, among countries with the largest number of undocumented immigrants – 725, 000 – living in the US.
US Border Patrol chief, Michael Banks, wrote on X that the authorities” successfully returned illegal aliens to India”, captioning a video showing shackled men being led into the military plane:” If you cross illegally, you will be removed. “
Anil Trigunayat, a former Indian diplomat who has served in the US, told Al Jazeera that the” treatment with Indian nationals, dragging them like criminals like this is unprecedented “in his experience.
” Handcuffing and those kinds of things are inhuman essentially. They have shown a very crass side of the American establishment, “said Trigunayat”. This is crass language. And absolutely unjustified and unnecessary. “
She was chained in chains, the claim read.
Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told parliament that the government was working with the Trump administration to prevent Indian citizens from being deported after there was a furor among opposition members in both houses of parliament on Thursday.
Jaishankar added that there hasn’t changed from the previous procedure and that the US’s operating procedure has allowed the “use of restraints” while deporting since 2012.
He also shared government data from 2009 on the deportees, touching a high of 2042 in 2019, before falling marginally again. Last year, 1368 undocumented Indian immigrants were deported by the US authorities.
He added that the US instructed New Delhi to follow up on their requests for food, medical attention, and toilet breaks while traveling, as well as that they were not restrained.
That wasn’t the experience of Khusboo Patel, a 35-year-old from Modi’s home state in Gujarat, on the 40-hour journey back home, her family said.
” She was shackled in chains her whole journey, strictly restricted to her seat, “her elder brother, Varun Patel, told Al Jazeera from his home in Vadodara, a city in eastern Gujarat.
When Khusboo was detained by the authorities, she had only been there for a month. We were not aware of her whereabouts and it made us anxious, “Patel, the brother, said. When local media inquired about Khusboo’s return, the family was informed.
” She told us that they were brought in like prisoners and criminals, “he said”. Nobody harmed her but it was a horrifying experience. “
Patel said he was disappointed in the Modi government’s failure to” secure a dignified return of our citizens”.
What are their current options for us? That time is gone. Our government enabled this mistreatment. “
Shattered dreams
In an effort to lure Singh into the US, Singh and Kaur are now concerned about recovering the more than $55,000 in debt owed to friends, a neighborhood bank, and small-time lenders. The couple, parents to two children, sold their farmland – but it wasn’t enough. Not by a distance.
” We were cheated by our agent who left my husband going from one place to another, “Kaur, 35, told Al Jazeera.
Kaur said she was horrified when she saw the immigrants being held in cuffs because she spoke in a muffled voice. I’m satisfied that my husband is at home with me now, “she said”. However, we are now concerned about our enormous debt. How will we ever recover that money? “
Vinod Kumar, head of the sociology department at Panjab University, Chandigarh, said thousands of youth continue to sell their belongings and take up risky, so-called dunki routes in search of a better life”. With deportation, they have finished their career at both, home and abroad, “he said, adding that a majority of deportees come from lower-income families.
” Earlier, this trend was limited to Punjab, Gujarat, or to some states in]southern India], “said Kumar, who specialises in diaspora politics. Now it’s expanding to other parts of India.
Singh and the passengers on the same plane with him have returned.
Source: Aljazeera
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