Davinder Singh says government officials failed to provide adequate food for the deportees when transporting illegal Indian immigrants from the United States. One of the deportees who recently arrived in Amritsar, Davinder Singh, claims that they even put the turban, a symbol of the Sikh faith, into the trash can.
Davinder Singh claimed to have witnessed US officials tossing turbans into the trash can in an interview with news agency PTI.
Davinder shares his experience to PTI
“It was very painful watching turbans being thrown into a dustbin,”.
On February 15, Davinder, 21, was part of the second group of 116 undocumented Indian immigrants who were returned to India aboard a US military plane.
From the village of Nangal Jalalpur in the Hoshiarpur district of Punjab, Davinder Singh says he has spent around ₹40 lakh to realize his American dream.
However, after being held in a US prison facility, his trip to America (via the Dunkey route) became a nightmare. He asserted that illegal Indian deportees were made to reside in “wafer-thin blankets” in “chilling temperatures.”
“The air conditioning was run at an extremely low temperature round the clock in the detention center in the US, and we were given only wafer-thin blankets, which could not provide any sort of protection,”
Davinder had crossed Amsterdam, Suriname, Guatemala, and even traveled through Panama and then he got caught by the US Border Patrol on January 27. Later on, he was sent to the detention center.
He says that 18 days in the detention center was the worst day of his life. Davinder told the deportees were given a small packet of chips and a packet of juice five times a day. They were given a roll of half-backed bread. half-backed rice, sweet corn, and cucumber. Most of the deportees were living in a state where they couldn’t even take bath daily.
Davinder added
“I didn’t comb my hair for 18 days,”.
“We were wearing the same clothes, which got dirty during the travel, for 18 days,”.
