53-year-old Indian-origin Meenu Batra was detained by US Immigration (IMAGE: X)
INDIAN-ORIGIN WOMAN DETAINED IN US: Meenu Batra, 53, has lived in the US for more than three decades, but ICE agents detained her while she was on her way to Wisconsin for work. Batra isn’t just any immigrant. She’s the only certified courtroom interpreter in Texas for Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, and she’s spent over 20 years helping people navigate the US immigration system. Her story goes even deeper. Batra’s the mother of four, and her youngest son recently joined the US Army.
He’s applied for parole on her behalf, hoping that might help. Back in the ’80s, Batra left India after losing her parents in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. She’s a master-level interpreter and has been offering her language skills professionally since 2007 with her business, Indus Lingo.
ICE agents picked her up at Valley International Airport in Texas on March 17 while she was heading to Milwaukee for a court assignment. She’s now stuck at El Valle Detention Center near the Mexico border.
According to her lawyers, Batra spent almost 24 hours without food or water after being detained. They’ve filed a habeas corpus petition, demanding she be released right away.
Since arriving at the detention centre, she’s barely gotten proper medical care. She’d had surgeries just a few months earlier, in December 2023, and now she’s sick with a respiratory illness and has lost her voice. Her situation is getting worse, and her family and attorneys are desperate for her release.
In 2000, Batra was given a status called “withholding of removal”, which is different from asylum. That is the US government accepted not to send her back to India since it may not be safe to her. However, in contrast to asylum, the status did not enable her to be a permanent resident (the process of acquiring a green card).
The order of 2000 made it clear that she could be taken (deported) out of the US. Nonetheless, she was given by the judge, simultaneously, a so-called withholding of removal status, i.e., US government agreed that she could be persecuted in case she was returned to India, hence she could not be deported to her native land.
Technically, Meenu Batra can be deported since the withholding of removal status does not revoke her deportation order. It just denies the US an opportunity to repatriate her to India in case of persecution. This implies that government can send her to another country that can accept her.
Through policies driven by the Donald Trump administration, there was an increase in immigration enforcement efforts to any individual with a final removal order regardless of whether they are a long-established, law-abiding resident such as Batra. This has increased the risk that people with the status of “withholding of removal” could be detained and processed for removal, the Texas Observer reported.
Although these cases have been infrequent and complex, there have been cases when people with comparable protections were deported to the third country according to bilateral agreements.
Her attorneys, Robert Ray Urenda II and Deepak Ahluwalia, petitioned the US District Court of the Southern District of Texas to habeas corpus. The legal team said the detention is unlawful as nothing that Batra holds is valid work with official approval under a “withholding removal” order issued decades ago by an immigration judge in New Jersey, and is valid for another four years.
Batra informed the Texas Observer that the people who arrested her were unclothed in uniform or with visible badges. She also included that one of the agents questioned her whether she knew that she was in the country without legal permission and was to be deported. Since 2002, Batra lives in a town of Laguna Heights, south of Texas, on the border with Mexico. She has been a certified interpreter over the last 20 years, and has a master-level interpreter licence in Texas.
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