Red state's only licensed Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu interpreter is now in ICE detention

Last month, Meenu Batra, 53, who has lived in the South Texas border colonia of Laguna Heights since 2002, was on her way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to work another case. She’s been a court interpreter for over 20 years, the only one licensed in Texas for Hindi, Punjabi, or Urdu. Her language skills are requested nationwide, where she’s contracted to help people making their way through the immigration court system, just as she did for herself 35 years ago when she immigrated from India to New Jersey before settling in Texas.

She planned to meet with her adult children in Austin after the Wisconsin trip, the only difference she foresaw in an otherwise typical trip. Her routine for years included flying from either Harlingen or Brownsville to far-flung parts of the country where South Asian immigrants needed language access. For this trip, the flight was out of Harlingen.

But, around 5 p.m. on March 17, Batra was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents after passing through security at Harlingen International Airport. In a sworn deposition that was filed as part of a petition for habeas corpus—a legal request to be released on the grounds that the detention is unlawful—Batra said the people who arrested her did not have visible badges nor were they wearing uniforms. One of those agents had asked Batra if she knew she was in the country illegally and that she had a deportation order. She replied that her work authorization status, which she applied for regularly after being granted a legal status called withholding of removal by a New Jersey immigration judge decades ago, was good for another four years.

“That doesn’t mean you can be here forever,” the agent replied. Two more plainclothes agents would join the two that detained her, bringing her down the escalator and to the front of the airport.

“Having watched and read enough news, I know that the moment you say something, they accuse you of evading arrest or whatever other things,” Batra told the Texas Observer. “So, being mindful of all that, mindful of the whole line and being embarrassed in front of everybody, I just complied.”

Batra’s attorneys say the agents were targeting her. “This is someone who maybe had one speeding ticket in the last 30 years and [is] being treated like a notorious criminal,” Deepak Ahluwalia, a California and Texas-based immigration attorney representing Batra, told the Observer.

One of the several executive orders the Trump administration issued early last year was for the Department of Homeland Security to target anyone in the country with a final deportation order.

People who are granted withholding of removal are typically immigrants who face persecution in their home countries, like those who receive asylum. Batra, who is Sikh, left India after her parents were murdered during a state pogrom against Sikhs in the 1980s. But, unlike asylum, withholding of removal does not come with a path to a green card.

Though people with Batra’s protection still have deportation orders, they cannot be removed to where they came from. If they are deported, the United States must send them to a “third country” that will accept them. The United States has agreements with at least 27 nations, a list the Trump administration has grown, that it’s paid up to $1 million a person to accept deportees. Many of these deportation flights leave from the Harlingen airport where Batra was detained.

ICE has not said where it plans to send Batra, according to her habeas filing.

After placing her in handcuffs, she said, two of those four agents at the airport drove Batra to ICE’s field office in Harlingen in an unmarked van. She had been there many times over the years to renew her work permit and to help attorneys with translation. Office staff recognized her as she was being processed. Agents posed for photos with her handcuffed, which they said was for “social media,” according to the habeas filing.

Batra was moved through various holding cells for 24 hours without food or water, first in Harlingen then in the El Valle Detention Center outside of Raymondville, in neighboring Willacy County. As of mid-April, she remains there without access to the consistent medical care she needs following surgeries she had in December. Within days of being in the facility, she caught a respiratory illness and lost her voice. She was supposed to see her doctor, in Harlingen, the week she was detained.

“I think it’s a real example of what the administration is doing in terms of its mass deportation plan and who it’s targeting,” Edna Yang, the co-executive director of American Gateways, an Austin-based legal services nonprofit, told the Observer. “It’s not targeting criminals, it’s not targeting dangerous people, it’s targeting individuals who are members of our community, who have a lot to offer and continue to offer a lot of positive things for our entire country and our society.”

Batra’s habeas petition included dozens of letters from people in her community and beyond asking for her to be released from detention. Cameron County Precinct 1 Constable Norman Esquivel, a Republican elected official and fixture in Laguna Madre-area politics, and several judges across the country are among those who authored a letter.

Batra’s attorneys argue that in the decades she’s had her legal protection the U.S. government never told her that it was planning to deport her, and that her detention violated her right to due process. One of Batra’s children recently enlisted in the military and filed a parole application for her. If granted, Batra could remain in the country in one-year increments. Her attorneys have also filed a temporary restraining order seeking to prevent ICE from moving her to another detention center.

In response to an Observer request for comment, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson noted that Batra had “a final order of removal from an immigration judge in 2000” and said “She will remain in ICE custody pending removal and will receive full due process.”

The spokesperson continued: “Employment authorization does NOT confer any type of legal status in the United States,” adding that the department is encouraging all “illegal aliens” to “self-deport.”

Nationwide, Texas is leading in habeas petitions from people detained by ICE. Most federal judges are siding with detained people, ordering them to be released or to receive a bond hearing before an immigration judge.

Batra, who has spent nearly half her life working in immigration courts, stopped working for the government’s side in immigration proceedings—instead helping only the immigrants seeking status—after seeing the conditions in detention facilities and how detained people were treated. Now, on the other side herself, she’s seeing people at the Raymondville facility who don’t speak English or Spanish, who are without the same knowledge and connections she has after so many years of helping people like them through the same system.

“I am grateful also, because something bad has to happen in life for you to truly appreciate what you have,” Batra said. “But I am getting this experience, and I’m watching the other women and just realizing how much help they need. At least I have awareness. I know my rights.”

DHS has until April 21 to respond to Batra’s habeas petition, according to court filings.