🍸Lovepreet Kaur, a 30-year-old woman, and her 10-year-old son are two of the 104 Indians deported from the US this week, as per the reports.
🔥She had gone to the US on January 2 with her son, with dreams of reuniting with her husband, who has been living there for the past few years. However, her journey took a drastic turn when she was caught by US border officials while attempting to enter the country via Mexico.
𝓀The family had risked everything for this journey. According to Kaur's family, as reported by the Indian Express, they paid 1.05 crore to agents who promised safe passage to the US through the dangerous ‘donkey or 'dunki' route through Latin America.
𝔉Lovepreet's in-laws had travelled to Amritsar to receive her and the child, but the news of her deportation left them stunned and speechless.
🐻Kaur's husband broke the news to the family, informing them about her detention and later confirming that she was being deported.
𓆏As per the media reports, a village sarpanch shared that most of the money for the journey was arranged by her husband from the US, while the family had taken a loan against their farmland.
"The agent told our family they would take us directly to the US. But what we endured was far from what we expected," The Indian Express quoted Lovepreet Kaur as saying.
Dangerous Journey Through The 'Dunki Route'
♌Describing her traumatic journey, Lovepreet revealed that instead of a straightforward passage to the US, she was forced to take an illegal migration route, also known as the 'Dunki' route.
Lovepreet Kaur and her son travelled to Medellin in Colombia and were kept there for nearly two weeks before being moved to San Salvador in El Salvador on a flight. From there, they walked for over three hours to Guatemala, then travelled by taxis to the Mexican border. After staying in Mexico for two days, we finally crossed over to the US on January 27, she told The Indian Express.
🍸"When we arrived in the US, they asked us to remove our SIM cards and even small ornaments like earrings and bangles. I had already lost my luggage in the previous country, so I had nothing to deposit with them. We were kept in a camp for five days, and on February 2, we were chained from the waist to our legs, with our hands cuffed. Only the children were spared," she was quoted as saying.
😼What shattered her completely was the silence during their 40-hour flight on the US military C-17 aircraft."No one told us where we were being taken, and when we finally arrived in India, it was a shock. We were told at the Amritsar airport that we had reached India, but it felt like our dreams were shattered in an instant,” she added.
ꦅThis deportation was not only a personal tragedy for Lovepreet but also a financial disaster for his family, who had taken huge loans for the journey.
𓃲"I wanted a better future for my son. My family borrowed heavily, believing we would soon reunite with our relatives in California. Now, everything is lost," she expressed to Indian Express.
🃏Lovepreet and her family have just 1.5 acres of land in Punjab, where she lives with her husband and elderly parents-in-law. She now appeals to the government to take strict action against fraudulent travel agents who exploit desperate families.
👍"The government must act against these criminals and recover our money. They sell us dreams, only to abandon us in foreign lands," she said, according to Indian Express.
