JALANDHAR: The United States in 2019 deported 1,616 Indians, the highest in any single year since 2014, according to data obtained from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A total of 8,447 Indian nationals were detained in ICE facilities last year for violating immigration laws, information provided last month under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has revealed.
In 2018, the US immigration authorities detained 9,818 Indians (including 359 women), the highest till now. The same year, 611 Indians were deported from the US.
The ICE data has also revealed that among the 8,447 “ICE initial bookings (sic) of Indian nationals by gender” 422 were women, 8,022 were men while gender of three was not clear to the American authorities. This is about four times when compared with the 2014 number when 2,306 Indian nationals were detained in ICE facilities. Notably, the number of women in the ICE detention centres is increasing almost in the same proportion.
This trend has been highlighted in viral videos of a series of instances involving Punjabi-speaking women and children trying to enter illegally through Mexico last year. In the second week of June last year, a six-year-old girl died in Arizona desert as her mother, who was from Haryana and trying to get reunited with her husband already in the US, had taken her along to illegally cross the American border via Mexico. Later, a video of her mother alighting from a bus, apparently in Mexico, along with some others including another woman and her daughter became viral on social media.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com, Feb 7, 2020