‘Inhuman’: As Modi visits Trump, outrage over shackled Indian deportees

On Wednesday, the US deported 104 Indians on the longest such military flight used so far, before Modi’s visit.

New Delhi, India – Kulvinder Kaur had tried and tried again to call her husband in the United States. After two weeks of the connection not going through, she was consumed by anxiety, she said from her home in Hoshiarpur, in the northern Indian state of Punjab.

“I was really afraid about what might have happened to him – if he was robbed or killed there. He is father of my children and I was afraid if I would ever see him again,” Kaur said.

Then, she saw a news telecast: President Donald Trump’s administration was deporting batches of illegal Indian immigrants.

Her husband, Harvinder Singh, 40, was among the 104 Indians who had entered the US illegally over the last few years, who were deported by the authorities on Wednesday as Trump doubled down on a key election pledge that drove him back into power in January.

Singh had made a desperate journey through jungles, crossing rivers and seas, to the US, in search of a better life for his family back in Punjab. This week, like many other detainees, including women, Singh had his hands and legs cuffed during the 40-hour journey to Amritsar, a city in northern India.