The children of the Indian detainees who are being kept at detention centres in the United States have been separated from their parents. The Indian embassy has established contact with two detention centres where nearly 100 Indians, mostly from Punjab, are detained for allegedly illegally entering the country through its southern border. The Indian government, however, has not been given consular access to the detainees.
The Indians, who were mostly Punjabi and Hindi speakers, are being held in a federal detention center in Oregon, Washington state, where they were transferred as part of a larger group of 123 people held allegedly for crossing into the US illegally along the border with Mexico weeks ago.
In a statement, the Indian embassy said that a consular official visited the detention facility in Oregon and that the embassy officials will also be visiting the New Mexico centre. “We have established contacts with both the detention facilities. A consular official has visited the detention facility in Oregon and another one is scheduled to visit the detention facility in New Mexico. We are monitoring the situation,” an embassy statement said.
According to a local news daily The Oregonian, some of the Indians identified themselves as Sikhs and Christians who claimed they were fleeing persecution by Hindu majority in India.
A group of Democratic lawmakers from Oregon who visited the facility had spoken about the alleged inhuman condition of the immigrant detainees. Most of the Indians at the detention centres don’t speak English and are communicating with the help of translators.
Asylum seekers are facing increased scrutiny under the Trump administration and those showing up illegally are being subjected to a zero-tolerance policy that has led to an outcry because of the splitting of families. The administration said 10,000 of the 12,000 children in US detention facilities were those who were sent by their parents alone to be smuggled illegally into the United States and the remaining 2,000 were separated from their parents when their families crossed over illegally.
Sources in the Indian embassy said it could be difficult to establish the nationality in certain cases as many of the detainees destroy documents to seek immigration under refugee status, thus what India can do to help them could be limited.
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