100 Indians held at 2 US detention centres

Embassy establishes contacts with both the facilities

Washington, June 22: The Indian mission in the US has established contact with two immigration detention centres where nearly 100 Indians, mostly from Punjab, are detained for illegally entering the country through its southern border.

According to officials, around 40-45 Indians are at a federal detention centre in the Southern American state of New Mexico while 52 Indians, mostly Sikhs and Christians, are held in Oregon.

The Indian Embassy in a statement said it has 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,” the statement said.

More than a dozen of them are being held at the New Mexico centre for months. And the rest of the Indians were brought to this detention centre about a week ago.

Most of the detainees at the federal facilities are asking for asylum claiming that they “experienced violence or persecution” in their home country.

Satnam Singh Chahal of the North American Punjabi Association (NAPA) believes that thousands of Indians, with overwhelming majority of them being from Punjab, are languishing in jails in the US.

According to information obtained by NAPA through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) between three years of 2013, 2014 and 2015, more than 27,000 Indians were apprehended at the US border. Of these, over 4,000 were women and 350 were children.