Elderly Sikh woman detained by immigration authorities in US, family calls for her release

New York: A 73-year old Sikh woman has been detained by immigration authorities in California after she went for a routine check-in with the US agency, sparking protests and concerns among her family and members of the community.

Harjit Kaur, who has lived in the East Bay in Northern California for more than 30 years, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials during a routine check-in earlier this week, a report in Berkeleyside, a nonprofit news portal, said.

The report added that her family along with hundreds of members from the community organised a protest Friday, calling for the immediate release of Kaur, who was detained on Monday after ICE asked her to come to the San Francisco office to turn in additional paperwork.

“She was taken to a detention centre in Bakersfield,” the report said.

Harjit Kaur was undocumented, according to a report in ABC7News. She came to the United States in 1992 from India as a single mother with two sons. Her asylum case was denied in 2012, but since then she has “faithfully reported” to ICE in San Francisco every six months for more than 13 years, her daughter-in-law Manji Kaur said.

The Berkeleyside report said that “ICE assured her she could remain in the United States under supervision with work permits until they could receive her travel documents.”

The protest on Friday was organised by Kaur’s family, Indivisible West Contra Costa County and the Sikh Centre. Members of US Rep John Garamendi’s staff, local elected officials and other political leaders also attended, the report said.

KTVU Fox 2 news portal quoted Congressman Garamendi as saying that his office has sent an inquiry to ICE requesting that Kaur be reunited with her family.

In a statement, Garamendi said: “President (Donald) Trump initially promised to go after the ‘worst of the worst’ in his immigration policy. Yet this administration’s decision to detain a 73-year-old woman — a respected member of the community with no criminal record who has faithfully reported to ICE every six months for more than 13 years — is one more example of the misplaced priorities of Trump’s immigration enforcement.”

“Our office will do everything possible to support her case and her family,” he said. Local Council member Dilli Bhattarai said, according to The Berkeleyside report, that he is looking into how his city can put pressure on the federal government to release Kaur.

“She is not doing any harm to the community. She is an abiding [constituent] just like us,” Bhattarai said. “She has all the rights to be here as a community member and we should all support her immediate release.”

Kaur, who has two grandsons and three granddaughters among other relatives, had worked for over two decades at a local Indian clothing store, the report said.

Her granddaughter Sukhdeep Kaur described Kaur as an “independent, selfless, hard-working” and termed her as a “mother figure” [to the community].

“We are all just in a state of shock,” Sukhdeep Kaur said.

Her family voiced concern over her health, claiming that being detained at her age with serious health issues such as thyroid disease, migraine, knee pain, and anxiety, her life could be at risk, the report added.