"Manjit Kaur hopped into the backseat of a family friend's Honda to escape the unrelenting clamor of car horns outside, desperate for a quiet place to hear her mother-in-law's voice the first time Harjit Kaur was able to call from an ICE detention center in the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, almost 300 miles away from her longtime Hercules home."
"Many know the 73-year-old Kaur as a seamstress at Sari Palace in Berkeley, where she started work shortly after she immigrated to the Bay Area in 1992, hopeful to find asylum in this country from India. But her family said she's spent the past week in Mesa Verde a processing center in Bakersfield that's long failed to provide basic health care or provide records of the people who are detained there, according to an April report released by the California Department of Justice."
"Kaur's asylum case was denied in 2012, but Manjit Kaur said she has helped her get to her required check-in meetings with ICE agents ever since a stressful legal limbo, despite the fact that her mother-in law doesn't have a criminal record. While she said federal immigration agents previously reassured the grandmother of five she was complying with the law and could remain under supervision with work permits,"
Harjit Kaur, a 73-year-old long-time Hercules resident and seamstress at Sari Palace, was detained at a San Francisco immigration office and transferred to Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield, nearly 300 miles away. Family members attempted to receive her call from the detention center but were unable to connect after eight credit cards failed to process a reportedly $52 charge for a 15-minute call. Protesters in El Sobrante rallied with signs demanding her return and criticizing ICE. An April California DOJ report cited Mesa Verde for failing to provide basic health care and adequate detainee records. Harjit’s asylum case was denied in 2012; family says she has no criminal record and had been attending required check-ins.
Read at www.eastbaytimes.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]