Amritsar: A decade ago, Sukhpreet Singh* chose to migrate to the US the hard way. He was packed in a hidden compartment at the back of a truck along with 22 other men and women, with nothing but half a litre of water and an apple for a 24-hour non-stop journey.
From a village in Gurdaspur near the Pakistan border, his life in Punjab had stagnated. A life in the US seemed possible and prosperous. He crossed jungles and rivers, staved off hunger and diseases to reach the US-Mexico border.
To stay in the US permanently, he applied for the most important piece of paper — an asylum letter.
And facilitating that dream are letters from Sangrur MP, Simranjit Singh Mann, which narrate the atrocities Sikhs face in India where they are a minority.
Sukhpreet attached it to his file in the immigration and asylum tribunal to make his case stronger.
“The letter said that I was a member of Mann’s political party Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and I was harassed for propagating Sikhism. It is believed by asylum seekers that these letters work. So, most people attach them with their cases and almost all of them get these letters from Mann,” Sukhpreet said.
The obsession to migrate to the US is soaring among youth in Punjab. Men are paying lakhs of rupees to traffickers to cross over to the US illegally. “We could not breathe. There was only enough space to either stand or sit. People were crying and wanted to get out, but the driver did not stop,” Sukhpreet said, narrating his experience.
Their hope is that they will get asylum on humanitarian grounds there.
Talking to ThePrint, Mann, who constantly attacks the state and central governments for depriving Sikhs of their rights, admits that he gives the letters to those who approach him.
“I’m very grateful to all the countries that honour this letter. Our [Sikhs’] security in India is in danger and by international law, we can seek asylum legitimately which people are doing. If the State rules by terror and doesn’t accept some, then people will flee,” says Mann.
For years, Mann’s office has been handing out such letters to asylum seekers, narrating the tales of torture, murders, and extrajudicial killing of the Sikhs and what has transpired since 1947 and in 1984.
Lawyers, human rights activists and agents ThePrint spoke to said the letters work but that they have now become a tool for the obsessed young men who illegally migrate to the US.
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The rush to migrate
The mood in Gurpreet Singh’s* house in a village in Gurdaspur is cheerful. On 5 April, his wife, Harleen Kaur*, received the photo she had been waiting for for months — a smiling Gurpreet posing in front of a tall wooden boundary between Mexico and the US which he had just crossed to enter the latter.
He had sold his land in the village, paid Rs 40 lakh to agents, and left home in October leaving behind his wife and three children — 10, 8 and 2.5 years old — in the hopes of giving them a better future.
“Once Gurpreet settles in the US, he will call us there,” says Harleen, oblivious to of how long the process of asylum takes in the US before the family can unite.
Gurpreet lived a life of penury back home. His father was tagged as a terrorist and killed in 1991 in a fake encounter during the militancy period in the state. He could only study till class 10 and worked as a driver in Punjab. His desire to migrate could not be fulfilled through any of the legal routes, explains his grandfather, who raised him. That is why Gurpreet chose the illegal route.
Punjab’s villages and cities are simmering with youth who want to break free from a life of drudgery. But since most of them do not qualify to apply for study, work, tourist or business visa, or for permanent residency, they put their fate in the hands of human traffickers.
“Many people sell their land, take loans from relatives and risk their lives to go via the illegal route,” says Sarabjit Singh Verka, lawyer and human rights activist.
The data shows that the number of Indians entering the US illegally has shot up exponentially in the last few years. Close to 20,000 people entered in FY2020. This number went up to almost 45,000 just in the first six months of FY2023. While data on how many men from Punjab are crossing over to the US is not available, media reports suggest that most of the illegal immigrants are from Punjab and Gujarat. Also, the majority of those who migrate are single men.
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Long wait for asylum
Upon entering the US, the migrants are detained and taken to the asylum camps. After paying a bond, they are released, explains Kanwar Mubarak Singh, an advocate practising in the UK, who has handled such cases. Then the cases are presented before the immigration and asylum tribunal, where evidence of ‘danger’ is presented.
“Mann’s letters are working,” says Kanwar. “He writes a 15-page letter where he describes the crimes against the Sikhs dating back to the insurgency period in Punjab. He has very good credibility before the immigration authorities.”
While these asylum letters may have been relevant during the politically turbulent times in Punjab, today, these are only used to settle abroad when legal methods are not feasible, say advocates and human rights activists.
In his house in Sangrur, which doubles up as the party office, Mann justifies giving the letters by saying that the crimes against the Sikhs have not ceased since 1984.
“There is a general terror of the State. You see what terror the State has committed since 1984 to the Sikh people. There’s every reason that they don’t feel secure and safe. International law says that you can seek asylum where your life is safe and secure,” says Mann.
But these letters come for a price.
Some men who took letters from him said that they paid up.
Mann denies that he or his party’s district officials charge for the letter. He, however, adds that the people who take letters from him pay for the expenses incurred by the party during elections.
“It’s a genuine demand of the people who are fleeing the country out of terror and it would be unjustified if we took any money from them. They do help us during the elections…[The money goes] directly to the people who put up stages, the contractors from whom we take help, for advertisements, to reporters and all that stuff,” says Mann.
While these letters help strengthen the case of asylum, the process may take years. The migrants have to hire expensive lawyers to fight their cases in the tribunal. And along with the asylum letters, reports by the media and humanitarian organisations of atrocities against the minorities in India are attached to the case file.
“Detailed reports of how Sikhs have been victims of human rights abuses and attacks since partition are added. The police atrocities and injustices by a Hindu government at the centre and crimes against the Sikhs and other minorities are all stated. Besides, the judges know the scenario of minorities in India from the news. So, in most cases, they clear the files for asylum,” says Sukhpreet.
Misuse of asylum letter
To migrate via the illegal route, the agents charge above Rs 40 lakh. If the men make it alive, they have to shell out many more lakhs for bail and for lawyers’ fees in the US. Genuine cases of the families of victims of state-sponsored crimes are unable to shell out such large amounts, explains Verka. They allegedly continue to face regular harassment by the police in Punjab.
“Mann, who claims that he works for the Sikhs, what has he done for these families? Those who take letters from Mann do so to file a fake case of asylum. Those who are genuinely suffering won’t even need the letters. Their case papers are enough to show that they are persecuted,” says Verka.
Verka is also often approached by men who ask him for such letters. But unless they have a history of atrocities against them, with recorded evidence of police complaints and court cases, he refuses.
In his modest office in Amritsar, Verka is busy collecting documents for the 25-year-old nephew of Ranjit Singh. Seven of Ranjit’s family members, including three children, were allegedly shot by the state police and their informants in 1991.
It was the period of peak militancy in Punjab and the police had come looking for his brother, Joga Singh, who was labelled a terrorist, recalls Ranjit. One night, men barged into their home in Amritsar, shot everyone and burnt down the house. Joga and his wife were not in the house that night. They were arrested a year later and killed in a police encounter, alleges Ranjit. Ranjit and his uncle escaped the massacre and later went to court.
More than three decades later, Ranjit, his uncle, and their families claim that the police are not letting them move on from the trauma.
“They harass us till today. I don’t understand what they want from us. Every other day they come to our house, take our phones away and accuse us of getting money from abroad. We even relocated to Badala (a border town) from Amritsar because our children were also tired of this,” says Ranjit.
The CCTV cameras around their house in Badala captured how in the first week of April, seven men dressed in civil clothes, who were monitoring their house from a distance, entered it and questioned them about radical leader Amritpal Singh’s whereabouts.
“They were policemen and accused us of sheltering Amritpal. We have nothing to do with this,” says Harjeet Kaur, Ranjit’s wife.
Tired of the constant harassment, the family sold its their land to send Ranjit’s young nephew to the US to seek asylum. Escaping abroad felt like the only way to safety, says Harjeet.
“As per international law, Ranjit’s family is eligible for asylum. They have years of court cases, police FIRs and evidence of atrocities against their family. Yet, for decades they could not migrate. They had no resources,” said Verka.
The experts ThePrint spoke to explain that the political turmoil in Punjab over Amritpal Singh’s protests outside Ajnala police station and hundreds of his young supporters being arrested by the police, is potent for fuelling another exodus of the youth from Punjab. This time, the organisations which are victims of state excesses are Waris Punjab De and Anandpur Khalsa Force, both headed by Amritpal.
“All the young men who went to jail after the Ajnala incident, they all are entitled to asylum,” says Kanwar.
*Names have been changed.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)