Meenu Batra spent 35 years building a life in Texas. She raised four children in south Texas after fleeing religious persecution in Punjab, arriving in the United States in 1991. An immigration judge granted her legal protection from removal to India in 2000, recognizing she faced persecution there. Then, last month, federal agents arrested her at an airport and locked her in a detention facility without explanation.
Batra is the only licensed interpreter for Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu in Texas, a distinction that has made her essential to hundreds of people navigating the state's immigration courts. Yet Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stopped her at Harlingen International Airport on March 17 as she headed to Wisconsin for work and detained her at El Valle detention facility in Raymondville.
"It feels bizarre," she said from inside the facility, where she has been held for a month. "I don't know how else to put it. Here I am just staring at the wall wondering what exactly I'm doing here but also what is anybody doing here."
Batra, 53, described the detention as humiliating and criminal in its treatment of her. In a sworn deposition, she said an ICE officer asked if she knew she was in the country illegally. She responded that she had valid status and a legal work permit. Despite this, officers took her away in an unmarked vehicle, detained her without food or water for 24 hours, and denied her cholesterol medication for several days. She alleged that officers later forced her to pose for photographs with her hands behind her back, claiming the images were "for social media."
"This made me feel humiliated and treated like a criminal," she said.
The government has provided no explanation for her detention or her destination. Deepak Ahluwalia, her immigration attorney, said he and Batra have been kept entirely in the dark about the government's intentions.
The legal question hinges on a crucial distinction. Batra's 2000 protection was a "withholding of removal," which is a deferral of removal, not a final deportation order. This means the government cannot legally send her to India without reopening her immigration case. It has not done so. Ahluwalia suspects the government intends to send her to a third country where she has never been.
The Department of Homeland Security stated that Batra "was issued a final order of removal from an immigration judge in 2000," conflating her withholding of removal with a removal order. The agency declined to clarify where it planned to send her or respond to questions about her treatment in detention.
The U.S. government has already negotiated agreements with numerous countries, including Rwanda, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, and South Sudan, to accept deportees. Last month, an appeals court reversed an order requiring the administration to give deportees meaningful notice before sending them to unfamiliar countries. Since then, Costa Rica and Uganda have begun receiving U.S. deportees from other nations.
Inside El Valle, Batra said she has tried to help other detained women request confidential calls and access to lawyers. She described attempting to comfort a young woman who developed sleep paralysis shortly after turning 21 in detention and helping a woman in her 60s recover mobility after suffering a stroke. But she has also witnessed detainees suddenly disappear after suicide attempts, leaving her uncertain about what happens to them.
"People just disappear," she said. "And I know they want to make me disappear. I don't know where they want to send me."
The detention has upended her family's life. She was supposed to meet her eldest daughter's boyfriend for the first time after the Milwaukee trip. Instead, he met the family at the detention center. One son canceled a work trip to visit her. Another son left college to see her. Her youngest child, an 18-year-old enrolled in high school and recently enlisted in the military, has filed a parole application on her behalf through a program that provides a pathway to permanent residency for parents and spouses of service members.
"It's dehumanizing," Batra said, reflecting on how the detention affects her children. "I haven't been able to cry much because nothing is making sense."
Author James Rodriguez: "After 35 years building a family and career that serves the justice system itself, Batra's detention without explanation or clarity is a chilling reminder of how vulnerable even essential members of our communities remain."
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