‘I wanted to enter US from Arizona’: Deportee blames agent who made him cross border in state Trump lost

“I started from Delhi on December 16. The first agent landed me in Nicaragua. Then we somehow reached Mexico, where they kept us waiting for one month. We were aware that Trump was set to become President and he would tighten the norms. So we wanted to enter the US before Trump came to power. But our agent kept us waiting, and we were made to enter the US only on January 24,” he said.

“Our second demand after Trump became President was not to enter from the California border because Trump got defeated in California, so he had put more vigilance on the Mexico border with California. He was always more critical of immigrants in California. It was because the Trump administration believed that California authorities were soft on immigrants. So they deployed stricter officers at the California border with Mexico,” he said.

Yashpal had a smart plan. “We wanted to cross from the Arizona-Mexico border because it was more relaxed as Trump won this state. He was not much focused on immigrants landing in Arizona. I knew some youth from India who had crossed from Arizona on the same date we entered from the California border. But they went through because authorities were less strict at the Arizona border, and they would allow the immigrants to present their case at court,” he said.

Yashpal said, “I paid Rs 44 lakh to the agent, and still he made me cross the wrong border that I had warned against. The difference between the point we crossed in California and the point where we wanted to cross in Arizona is less than 40 km. We missed our chance by just 40 km.”

After taking office for the first time, in 2017, Trump expanded the criteria for deportation. He pushed for the removal of immigrants who lacked proper identification or had questionable documentation. “Now all immigrants reach the US with their legal passports as there are high chances of deportation if you are undocumented. Once a person has entered, their statement is recorded and they are given an alien number. But we were not given alien numbers. They were not ready to take our statements. They can decline recording statements and issuing alien numbers when the immigrant is proved to be a criminal or there is a problem authenticating their identity. What was worse was that some of those who were issued alien numbers were also deported. Ideally, after the issuance of an alien number, one is given a chance to appear in a local court to present their case within three months,” Yashpal said.

‘No proper food for 25 days’

Explaining his ordeal, Yashpal said, “We were not physically tortured. But they would keep us in rooms with air conditioners. It is already cold there, and living under AC is no less than torture. They would give us a polythene sheet to cover our bodies, and we would keep shivering. We were not given proper food. They gave us two apples a day, a very small quantity of rice and one bread for the whole day. I remained on this diet for around 25 days. My weight has reduced.”

Yashpal said, “We were not wearing turbans when we landed at the airport. They had removed our turbans. SGPC provided us Siropa, but these were not long enough as these are used only to honour someone and not to tie on the head. So I borrowed a cap to cover my head.”

“We came to know that we would be deported when they shackled us. We demand the government make agents return our money,” said Yashpal.

‘False hopes’

Yashpal said some of the illegal immigrants were hopeful that India would not allow more deportation flights in the wake of the uproar in Parliament over the treatment of the first batch.

“There are still thousands of immigrants from India awaiting their fate on the Mexico-US border. The hue and cry in the Indian Parliament over the deportation of the first flight gave hope to those still waiting in Mexico and who had not entered the US. They thought that now the Modi government would not allow more flights with deportees to land in India and hence entered the US. There was this false impression that no more flights would deport immigrants to India because we observed that some countries were not ready to take back their immigrants, and it would strengthen the case of such immigrants to stay in the US. So Indian immigrants thought the same would be the case with them.”