Correspondent of southern Asia and Afghanistan
Gurpreet Singh was foxed, the legs shackled and the chain tied around the waist. American patrol patrol, in Texas, led to Texas, according to the C-17 military transport aircraft.
It was February 3 and, after a months -long trip, he realized that his dream of life in America was over. It was deported back to India. “It felt like my soil slid under my legs,” he said.
Gurpreet, 39, was one of the thousands of Indians in recent years as he spent his life savings and crossed the continents to illegally enter the US through its southern border, as they tried to escape the unemployment crisis.
There are about 725,000 unfathomable Indian immigrants in the US, the third largest group behind the Mexicans and El Salvadorejci, according to the latest data from Pew Research 2022.
Now Gurpreet has become one of the first unfathomable Indians who have been sent home since President Donald Trump assumed his duty, with the promise that he would make mass deportations a priority.
Gurpreet intended to apply for asylum based on the threats he said he had received in India but – in accordance with Executive order from Trump to distract people without approving asylum hearing – He said he was removed without his case ever considered.
About 3,700 Indians were returned to Charter and commercial flights during the term of the President of Biden, but the recent pictures of the detainees in the chains under Trump’s administration caused anger in India.
American border patrol posted pictures in an online video with a bombastic sound record and warning: “If you go illegally, you will be removed.”
“We sat in foxes and shackles for more than 40 hours. Even the women were tied in the same way. Only the children were free,” Gurpreet told BBC in India. “We shouldn’t get up. If we wanted to use the toilet, we were accompanied by US forces and only one of our foxes took off.”
The opposition parties protested in the parliament, saying that the Indian deportations were given “inhuman and humiliating treatment.” “There is a lot of talk about how the Prime Minister fashion and Mr. Trump are good friends. Then why did Mr. fashion allowed it?” said Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the key leader of the opposition.
Gurpreet said, “The Indian government was supposed to say something on our behalf. They should have told the US in the deportation the way it was done before, without foxes and chains.”
A spokesman for the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the government expressed these worries with the USA and that as a result, on the following flights, the women’s deports were not put on and shackled with foxes.
But on the field, the scary picture and rhetoric of President Trump seems to have the desired effect.
“No one will try to go to the US now through this illegal ‘donkey’ route while Trump is in power,” Gurpreet said.
In the long run, it could depend on whether there were any deportations continued, but for now, many Indian people, locally called “agents”, were hiding, fearing a raid against them by the Indian police.
Gurpreet said the Indian authorities demanded the number of agents he used when he landed home, but the smuggler could no longer come.
“Still, I don’t blame them. We were thirsty and went to the well. They didn’t come to us,” Gurpreet said.
While he puts the official figure of the title Unemployment rate with only 3.2%Hides an insecure picture for many Indians. Only 22% of workers have regular salaries, most are self -employed, and almost fifths are “unpaid helpers”, including women working in family companies.
“We leave India just because we are forced. To get a job that paid me even 30,000 rupees ($ 270/$ 340) a month, my family would go through. I would never think about leaving,” said Gurpreet, who has a wife, mother and 18-month-old child.
“You can say whatever you want about the economy on paper, but you need to see the reality on the field. There is no opportunity here to do or run a job.”
The Gupaet transport company was among the small business dependent on money that was poorly affected when the Indian government withdrew 86% of traffic on traffic with four hours notes. He said the clients did not pay him and that he had no money to maintain business in the air. Another small company he founded, managing logistics for other companies, also failed to lock the covid, he said.
He said he tried to get visas to go to Canada and the UK, but his applications were rejected.
He then took all his savings, sold the land he owned and borrowed money from his relatives to compile 4 million rupees (£ 45,000/£ 36,000) to pay the smuggler to organize his trip, Gurpreet told us.
August 28, 2024, flew from India to Gvajan, South America to start a tiring trip to the United States.
Gurpreet emphasized all the stops he made on the map on his phone. He traveled from Gvajana through Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, mostly by buses and cars, partly by boat, and briefly on the plane – handed them from one human crossing to another, dated several times and released them.
From Colombia, smugglers tried to lead him flight to Mexico, so he could avoid the transition of the terrible Darién Gap. But Colombian immigration did not allow him to board the flight, so he had to go a dangerous path through the jungle.
The dense expanses of the rainforest between Colombia and Panama, Darién Gap can only be crossed on foot, risking accidents, diseases and attacks by criminal gangs. Last year, 50 people died, making a transition.
“I wasn’t scared. I was an athlete so I thought I’d be fine. But that was the hardest part,” Gurpreet said. “We walked for five days through the jungles and rivers. In many parts, as he passed the river, the water came to my chest.”
Each group was accompanied by a smuggler – or “Donker” as Gurpreet and other migrants refer to them, the word seemingly derived from the term “donkey route” used for illegal migration travel.
At night, they would put tents in the jungle, ate some food they wore and tried to rest.
“She was raining all day when we were there. We were soaked on the bones,” he said. They were guided over three mountains in the first two days. Afterwards, he said they had to follow the route marked in blue plastic bags that were smuggled to trees.
“My feet began to feel like lead. My nails crashed, and the palms of my hands were peeled and they had the thorns in them. However, we were fortunate that we did not encounter robbers.”
When they reached Panama, Gurpreet said that he and about 150 others had detained border officers in a cramped prison. After 20 days, they were released, he said, and it took him from there for more than a month to reach Mexico, passing with Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.
Gurpreet said they had been waiting for almost a month in Mexico until there was an opportunity to cross the border in the US near San Diego.
“We did not scallic the wall. There is a mountain near which we climbed. And there is a razor that Donker broke out,” he said.
Gurpreet entered the United States on January 15, five days before President Trump took office – believing that he did it on time, before the boundaries became impenetrable and the rules became firmer.
Once in San Diego, he surrendered to the US border patrol and was then detained by immigration and customs execution (Ice).
During the Biden administration, illegal or unproven migrants would appear before the immigration officer who would do a preliminary interview to determine if any person has an asylum case. While most of the Indians migrated out of economic needs, some also left Fearing persecution for their religious or social background or their sexual orientation.
If they cleaned the interview, they were released, waiting for the decision to award asylum from the immigration judge. The process would often take years, but in the meantime they were allowed to stay in the US.
That’s what Gurpreet thought it would happen to him. He planned to find a job at the store and then get into transportation, a job he was familiar with.
Instead, less than three weeks after he entered the US, he found himself running toward that C-17 aircraft and returned where he started.
In their small house in Sultanpur Lodhi, a city in the northern state of Punjab, Gurpreet is now trying to find a job to bring back the money he owes and to care for his family.
Additional reporting AAcritic Thapar
