Deported by error: Garcia case and its echoes in India

The ongoing Abrego Garcia deportation case in America illustrates the helplessness of individuals who sink into the quicksands of bureaucracy and/or disputes between state organs for no fault of their own. The fate of persons who inadvertently get caught in the meshes of adversarial inter-state relations is, perhaps, worse. I know of some of these Kafkaesque situations involving Indians. This case revived these memories. But first, a brief assessment of the implications of the Garcia case for Trump’s America.

At 16, Garcia from El Salvadore entered the US illegally in 2011. He later married a US national. An immigration court ruled in 2019 that he could not be deported from the US. That decision stands. Yet, the US immigration authorities deported him to El Salvador, where he was imprisoned. Garcia’s wife approached the Federal District Court of Maryland. The US authorities admitted in court hearings that Garcia’s deportation was because of an “administrative error." The court ordered that he be brought back immediately.

The Trump administration went to the Supreme Court, arguing that Garcia was a member of MS-13, a designated foreign terrorist gang, and his return to the US would constitute a public safety threat. Ignoring this aspect, the Supreme Court ordered that the government should “facilitate" Garcia’s return and keep the District Court informed of its actions. It also directed the District Court to respect that foreign policy was in the government’s domain.

The Trump administration has no intention of seeking Garcia’s return. Indeed, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, after meeting Trump in Washington on April 13, told reporters that he had no intention to release Garcia. The District Court is soldiering on, but it is likely to succeed. The fact is that Trump is destroying the institutional balance which is the foundation of the US system.

Now, to two Indian cases of persons who faced unforgiving bureaucracies determined to uphold national interest!

In the early 1990s, a Belgian nun called the Indian Mission in Islamabad from Lahore that two young Indians were in her church. The Mission told her to send them to Islamabad. They were received on arrival and debriefed. At the same time, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry was informed because they would have monitored the call from Lahore. The two boys said that they were sailors employed in the UAE. Their vessel had sunk off the Iranian coast. They were rescued and put in an Iranian detention centre. One day, they were pushed across the border into Pakistan. They managed to reach Quetta and took a train to Lahore. One of them was from Goa and the other from Bihar.

The Pakistani Foreign Office directed that they be sent to a police station, where they were arrested, charged and imprisoned for two years. The Pakistani newspapers reported that two R&AW agents had been arrested!

The Goa boy’s mother lived in Mumbai and visited the Ministry of External Affairs occasionally to seek its intervention for his early release. My colleagues treated her with empathy. I spoke to the Pakistan DHC, pressing that they were innocent boys deserving sympathy. He found their story unbelievable. After serving their sentences, they were released. The mother brought her son to Delhi to meet us because she told him that the MEA had been a great support. What the son told me was this.

In addition to the two, three more were rescued from the vessel by the Iranians and all five boys were pushed into Pakistan. All five reached Lahore and got into two tongas, which got separated. The two in one tonga went to a church for help; the Goanese was a Christian. The Pakistani priest there panicked and called the nun.

I asked him about what happened to the other three. After some reluctance, he said “Sir, they went to Karachi by train and being sailors, went to a seamen’s association’s office near the port. They related their story to its office-bearers who believed them. They were put on a boat bound for Mumbai and are now living safely there."

He also told me that the Pakistani sailors had taken an oath from them that they would not contact any Indian official just as they had not informed any Pakistani official.

I pleaded with him to inform one of them that I would like to meet the three. He said that he would pass on the message. The three never broke their oath!

The second case is that of an Indian who was one of Abu Dhabi ruler Sheikh Zayed’s drivers. The Director of the ruler’s office called me and asked why he was being denied a visa. This was 1980 and I was at our embassy in Abu Dhabi. The driver, who was in his sixties, came to see me and related his story.

He said that he reached Dubai in 1945 from Kerala. Some years later, he fell ill and was being taken on a dhow to Kerala, but as his condition worsened, the dhow dropped him in Karachi. He was hospitalised and when he recovered, he wanted to go home quickly, but he had no identity papers. He was advised by some locals that he should get Pakistani papers and an Indian visa for that was the quickest way for him to get home. He did.

In Kerala he got married, threw away his Pakistani passport, got an Indian one and returned alone to Dubai. After a few years, he returned to India on his Indian passport, but a neighbour told the police that he had earlier come on a Pakistani passport. He was taken into custody and deported to Dubai. For over two decades, he had not been able to go to India while his family remained there.

He ended his story by telling me: “I don’t want to die here. I want to be buried in my homeland." The Indian authorities never agreed, as far as I know, to his return.

Nowadays, there are heart-rending cases of young persons of both countries who cross the India-Pakistan border inadvertently and spend years in prison unless compassionate border security officials do not refer their cases to the police but quietly return them to the other side. But such compassion is rare.

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