'USA Chalo': A Rallying Cry That Soured

ꦚThere were 17 of them crammed into a small boat, their bodies jostling for space as the salty air whipped all around in the all-encompassing darkness. While some huddled uneasily on the filthy, vomit-streaked deck, the majority sat on the narrow benches fixed to the floor. A few who had improvised temporary shelters out of ripped plastic trash bags could be seen sticking their arms and heads out through the holes. As the boat headed towards the American coast in the middle of the night, they thought they were near the end of their arduous journey….

🌳Wrapped in an old swathe of threadbare linen, Ruchi, the 32-year-wife of Karanshingh Natuji, was telling this story for perhaps the 15th time since the couple and their only son were “brought back” to their native village, Boru, in Mansa taluka of Gujarat’s Gandhinagar district.

People from all walks of life have been dropping in to hear the tale from the “survivors” themselves, so to speak. Ruchi, her husband and their child were among the 104 Indian citizens who landed at the Amritsar airport on February 5 in an IC-17 Globemaster, a US military aircraft.

Among the deportees, 33, including women and children, were from Gujarat. They were flown from Amritsar to Ahmedabad and then taken in police vehicles to their hometowns or native villages. Identified as “illegal immigrants”, they had been deported from the United States of America—shackled on the way like the slaves in a past era used to be during their forced journey in the opposite direction—as the new administration under Donald Trump went about fulfilling a campaign promise.

Before being bundled back ignominiously to India soon after “getting there”, Ruchi’s westward journey had taken three tough months of surviving largely on the hope of reaching the final destination—something they had only heard about and whose meaning could best be expressed in hope-filled ideas such as a “better life”, a “better job”, “better pay” in a “better place”. “Kyu jaate hain America aap hi batao (Why do people go to America? You only tell),” says Karanshingh, his brows twisted like knotted roots. “Is it wrong to expect something better in life?” Ruchi’s father-in-law, who is the principal of the village school, insists that they were “brought back illegally”. “Going to America💜 is a common practice here. I don’t know whether they went through the legal route or not, but the manner in which they were brought back was surely wrong,” he says.

♋As sunshine lights up the balcony of their village home, Ruchi purses her lips while her fingers run lightly against the thin skin of her saree. She places her veined hand on her mouth and coughs when someone asks her about the journey back. Sipping tea from a cup that had blue leaves painted on it, she recalls her childhood instead. “When I was a toddler, I heard that the dollar would always be worth more than pennies. This is also true about our lives,” she says. Asked what lies ahead, Karanshingh says they need to “recover first from what has already happened to us”. “Only then will we be able to figure out what to do with this life that has been given to us, like to a beggar. Every moment, the shadow of the police hangs over us. The entire village, no, in fact, the whole country knows. Who will give us work now?” asks Karanshingh and turns to look at his mother who is washing utensils. She has not talked to him since his return. The home feels a bit shallow to him.

🍸In nearby Bapupura village, Chaudhary Jegneshkumar Baldev, a 35-year-old among the Gujarati deportees, says the journey back in chains was “nothing compared to what it had taken us to reach America”. Jegneshkumar had sold the 10-acre land he jointly owned with his father as it was slowly becoming a burden, with growing debts and diminishing returns. He spent countless hours working the soil, trying to make it yield more than it could. But, no matter how hard he tried, the returns weren’t enough to sustain his dreams. That’s why he decided to take his wife and son to the “land of big dreams and a proper life”.

It takes deep pockets to negotiate the world of immigration agents. The Rs 60 lakh Jegneshkumar paid the agents took him first to a jungle that swallowed his footsteps in its thick and humid silence. He was among a group of fellow Indians, Venezuelans and Haitians that had entered the Darien Gap🌟, which connects the two American continents. Mosquitoes feasted on his blood, biting him everywhere on his arms and face. “I looked nothing like the man who had boarded a flight to Brazil weeks ago,” he recalls. As the days blurred into each other, he kept on mumbling what his agent had told him: “There are no heroes in Darien, just survivors. If you hear a scream, do not turn, just keep walking.”

Gujaratis have heard many such stories of “they made it” to the American Dream. In almost every village in Gujarat, there are big billboards that read “USA Chalo” (Let’s go to the USA), and one hears of Dhingucha, a village in Gandhinagar’s Kalol taluka that became empty because almost everyone moved to the US, mostly illegally. In the 1960s, the US government encouraged professionals such as doctors and engineers to immigrate and relaxed the laws to allow them to bring in their family members as well. The Gujarati community took full advantage of such policies as more people recognised the benefits of living in the US🌠. Many more arrived, both legally and illegally, to meet the needs of the professionals. They started businesses like department stores and built temples, too. Over time, the Gujarati population in the US has significantly increased.

ꦺ“I moved to the US in 1986, legally,” says Hansalbhai Patel, who is on a short visit to Gujarat. “I worked in a motel and then I owned one. Today I own gas stations and multiple stores. When I come to know that someone has come from Gujarat through the illegal route, I try to help them get a lawyer.” Patel believes that the “migrants have built what America is right now”.

ꦇReferring to his deportation from the US, Jeevan Gohil, another deportee brought back to Boru village, says, “I have never been humiliated like this.” He was earlier in Dubai for over a year. Working in a small convenience store, he used to send money back home to his family. But it was not enough. His brother was a sports teacher and his father toiled the fields, but nothing ever seemed to change. For Jeevan, life in Dubai had become a blur of routine and he longed to escape. During a visit to his village, Jeevan noticed that the walls of every house were painted in the blue of the American flag and nameplates with “USA” were proudly displayed. He saw the same in Nardipur, a neighbouring village where every house seemed to have someone who had made it to the US. “But as soon as my feet carried me there (the US), my hands were shackled,” Jeevan rues.

Kavitbhai (name changed), a 50-year-old former visa agent in Kalol, a nearby town, says it won’t be easy for Trump to send all the illegal immigrants out of the US because “an illegal immigrant can be paid $12 for work that would fetch a legal immigrant $19”. Most of the illegal immigrants from the Surat belt are employed in motels, while those from north Gujarat work in gas stations and stores. They survive by coming to each other’s aid, which forges community ties across the caste barriers evident in villages where Thakurs, Darbans, Patels and Yadavs do not live in each other’s localities. The “illegals” take up jobs that Americans avoid. For instance, Latin Americans🧜 are employed on farms in South California that demand intensive labour and long hours over extended periods.

🍰Dharmesh Patel (name changed), 45, a small-time realtor in Mansa, says his brother travelled to the US illegally after selling their one-acre land. “The very option to not go to America is culled by the Patel ethos. Unless you are going to the US or Canada, you cannot even marry in our community,” he adds. His 21-year-old daughter, Nita, who aspires to do an MBA in the US, says a neighbour’s wedding was cancelled even though the couple were in a relationship for more than six years because the man had not planned to go abroad.

While the American dream☂ ended badly for those who were deported, it is unlikely their travails would significantly alter the desperation of others to make it big in the US. Many of the illegal immigrants do not know English and have faced racism, but, as Dharmesh puts it, “here too we have the caste system”, making it sound like a kind of barter—one form of humiliation instead of another. The deportees, meanwhile, are not really “at home”. When villagers gather to discuss their situation, they often choose silence. Someone’s kin, however, is eager to respond on his behalf. “He had just gone for a vacation, but somehow the vacation went wrong,” he says.

This article is a part of Outlook's March 1, 2025 issue 'The Grid', which explored the concept of binaries. It appeared in print as 'USA Chalo'.