The deportation of Bibi Harjit Kaur, a 73-year-old Indian woman, has generated outrage among migrant organizations and communities in the United States. After more than three decades living in California, she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and sent back to her home country.

The case has brought the harshness of immigration policies into the spotlight, especially when they affect older people with long-standing roots in the country. Her lawyer denounced the treatment she received in detention centers as "inhumane," describing conditions that have been questioned on multiple occasions by human rights organizations.

How Harjit Kaur was detained

According to Newsweek, Kaur went to a routine check-in with ICE in San Francisco on September 8. There, she was arrested and first transferred to Bakersfield, California, before being flown in handcuffs to Lumpkin, Georgia, where she was admitted to the Stewart Detention Center. Her lawyer, Deepak Ahluwalia, reported that this move occurred in the early hours of the morning without any notice to her family or legal team.

The conditions of detention have been one of the most criticized points. According to Kaur herself, when she asked for water and food to accompany her medication, the guards gave her a plate of ice. She also reported sleeping on the floor without a bed and not being provided basic hygiene items, limiting herself to wet wipes.

The Stewart Center, operated by the private company CoreCivic, has been under scrutiny by organizations including the ACLU, which documented at least 10 deaths there between 2017 and 2024. Ahluwalia insisted that subjecting a 73-year-old woman to such conditions was “inhumane and unnecessary.”

ICE’s reasons for carrying out the deportation

According to the federal agency, Kaur had final deportation orders since 2013, when she exhausted her appeals after twice requesting asylum for religious persecution in India. ICE told NBC News that its mission is to comply with the law and execute court orders,stating that she would not spend “more taxpayer dollars” to prolong her case.

Kaur’s Life in the U.S. and Her Future

Kaur immigrated to the United States in 1991 from Punjab, India, with her two children. For more than 30 years, she lived in California, worked, paid taxes, and integrated into her community. However, lacking valid travel documents, her departure from the country was delayed until Indian authorities were recently able to issue them.

Eventually, ICE deported her by plane from Georgia to Armenia and then to New Delhi. Her devastated family said the case reflects “a failure of the U.S. immigration system,” as she never refused to return to her country, but could not do so without papers. Kaur's legal team announced it will file a formal complaint over the detention conditions, which they described as "completely unacceptable." Continue reading: Famous Mexican journalist compares children persecuted by ICE to Jews wanted by the Nazis More than 400,000 Mexican immigrants have ceased to be part of the labor market in the United States ICE agent assaulted a Hispanic woman in immigration court in New York: now she faces consequences