“no one is safe,” Meenu Batra said in an exclusive interview with CBS News. But she added, “I believe in the system. I believe I’m documented.”
India-born Batra said she has been living and working legally in the US for decades.
The court translator spent 45 days in ICE custody after being arrested at a Texas airport on March 17 while traveling to Milwaukee for work.
“They told me you’re here illegally,” Batra previously told CBS News while in custody at the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville, Texas. “And I said, ‘No, sir, my documents are in my bag right now.'”
Now that she has been released, she described the uncertainty she felt while in detention, saying, “You become smaller. You start to believe that maybe you’re not equal, that you’re not human.”
Batra said most of the women she met in ICE custody are not the violent criminals the Trump administration says it is pursuing. He said leaving them behind makes him feel guilty.
Last week a federal judge ordered the 53-year-old releaseruling that he was detained “for no apparent reason”.
Batra’s children are relieved that she is home now, but said they are still struggling with what happened.
“My daughter doesn’t sleep at night,” Batra said. “She keeps an eye on me. Whenever a car passes, she gets scared that someone is here…to get you.”
Batra fled to the United States as a teenager after her parents, who were members of India’s Sikh community, were killed during violence against followers of the religion. She applied for asylum and was eventually granted “withholding of removal” status, but that status did not allow her to apply for citizenship. However, their son Jasper joined the military a few months ago and that has given him a path to citizenship as parents of US service members are eligible to apply.
Batra’s habeas petition against the US government, which aims to prove that his detention was illegal, is still pending.
In a statement to CBS News, the Department of Homeland Security said, “On March 17, ICE arrested Meenu Batra, an illegal alien from India, during a targeted enforcement operation. Batra was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in 2000. She first entered the country illegally at an unknown date and location. An activist judge appointed by Barack Obama released her from ICE custody on April 30. We those Will continue to fight to remove illegal aliens who have no right to remain in our country.”
Batra described the DHS statement as “deeply insulting to judges and the judiciary”.
“They forget that aliens are humans and humans have rights too,” he said.
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