Harjit Kaur, 73, made headlines after she was deported from the US and was treated “inhumanely” when the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made preparations to send her back to India. Kaur was deported after living in the US for 30 years. However, now it has emerged that the elderly woman had reached America illegally, and did not even have a passport. 

In an interview to a local media, the woman accepted leaving India without a passport, saying that she never had one. She perhaps reached the US through a donkey route. A report stated that she, on multiple occasions, tried seeking asylum in the US and it was when she exhausted all her options, when the ICE sent her back. 

“I didn’t take my passport, I did not have one yet,” she was heard saying in Punjabi.

This comes as US President Donald Trump‘s administration continues a wider crackdown on immigration, and especially alleged illegal immigrants in the US.

Harjit Kaur was first detained by immigration officials in California after she went for a routine check — triggering widespread protests from the Sikh community for her release. The ‘undocumented’ Sikh woman had paid her taxes in the US and held a work permit and other necessary documents.

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Kaur had unsuccessfully applied for asylum in the US many times and was finally arrested by the ICE officials on September 8. Her lawyer, Deepak Ahluwalia, said the woman has no criminal record and was treated in an “unacceptable” manner by ICE officials during her detention, reported BBC.

From California, she was taken to a holding facility in Georgia on September 19 and deported to India on September 22. She was not allowed to visit her US home or bid a proper farewell to family and friends, her lawyer added.

Ahluwalia continued that Kaur was treated inhumanely. In a video post on Instagram, he said it was “unacceptable” as the old woman spent 60-70 hours in detention without a bed, forced to sleep on the floor despite double knee replacements, the BBC report added.

He claimed that Kaur was given ice to take medicines and denied food she could eat. The guards even blamed her for not being able to eat the provided sandwich, he alleged.

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ICE told BBC that Kaur had “exhausted decades of due process” and that an immigration judge had ordered her removal in 2005. It said that she filed multiple appeals all the way up to the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals and lost each time. 

“Now that she has exhausted all legal remedies, ICE is enforcing US law and the orders by the judge; she will not waste any more US tax dollars,” it added, quoted BBC.

She continued to stay in the US, without any legal documents. She couldn’t return because she lacked the documents required for the same.

As a result, the immigration authorities asked her to report to them every six months. This time, she was arrested in San Francisco when she had gone for a check-in.

Kaur, who moved to California in 1991 with her two young sons to escape political chaos in Punjab, worked for two decades as a sari-store seamstress and paid her taxes. “After living for so long (in the US), you are suddenly detained and deported this way; it is better to die than to face this,” she told TOI after landing in Delhi.