Deported to India: Sikh grandmother spent three decades in Bay Area before ICE arrest

Local News Matters Bay City News ^ | 10/4/2025 | Sunita Sohrabji, India Currents

[sheana]

I worked fora a huge welfare department as an eligibility worker. When I first started I had someone come in and apply and I asked my manager about them having a sponsor. I was told...oh we don’t worry about that...process them.
I’m sure 99% of the welfare departments in the country work that way.

[Lurker]

You should report them.

L

[sheana]

https://www.cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/cash-assistance-for-immigrants

California has its own SS program for illegals.

[cp124]

Didn’t respect the host and become a citizen after decades. Good ridence scofflaw

[nwrep]

I agree. The PR part of this deportation program is not handled well.

[nwrep]

Great link. Did you read it? Scroll down. Notice what happened starting 2017 (start of Trump’s first term)? Notice the massive and frequent changes to this program to expand eligibility and remove all eligibility requirements, and then to greatly expand the benefits. Up until 2017, from 1996 onwards, there were only 2 amendments. From 2017 until now, more than 30 amendments to expand benefits. Copying all.

[surrey]

A friend of my mine recently moved into a subsidized housing project in Northern N.J. She waited almost 10 years for an apartment. She said virtually no one speaks English and a vast majority of the people there (mostly women) are Korean.
Sh has no idea how they were able to get an apartment when she had such a long wait.

[catnipman]

dozens [hundreds?] of these sob-sister stories have been published since the $100,000 H1-B visa fee was announced ...

CLEARLY, the massive dot Indian lobby has been busy calling in chits from their western corporate propaganda media buddies, demanding a full-court propaganda press ...

[MayflowerMadam]

‘Bye, Granny.”

[poinq]

I am just guessing. But I imagine the reason they picked on her is because she has no legal right to benefits she was collecting. Or she was not paying taxes. Likely there is even more to it. As she was likely working for a illegal firm. Which is why she was paid in cash. What nobody ever says but is perfectly clear. Is that we would all go to jail for the things she does. So why is she immune. Illegals live in a parallel universe right beside us. They break every law continuously. They go to court, don’t speak English. Don’t pay for their lawyer. Get off and keep living in the shadows right beside us.

[rdcbn1]

She probably never worked except as a babysitter to the grandkids and cooking but I'll bet was getting Medicare and SS at 73. The Chinese, Koreans and Indians in my neighborhood bring their parents over and do that as well as get them into subsidized senior housing. Hopefully the party's over very soon.

---

Exactly. I'm kind of shocked that the story didn't touch on how she was going to lose all of her government funded health care, public assistance and free housing once she is out of the US.

It's bad enough that we have to have American citizens abusing our social welfare system.

It's insane to extend those generous "entitlements" to foreign residents, ,both legal and illegal, who are not entitled to receive them and its bankrupting our social welfare and health care systems

[Wuli]

The crux of the case:

Kaur’s asylum case was denied twice: in the last, by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in 2013. She needed travel documents to return to India after her asylum claim was denied, but had not received the necessary paperwork when she was arrested by ICE on Sept. 8 during a routine check-in at the ICE office in San Francisco.

ICE said, enough is enough, papers or no papers, time to go.

[butlerweave]

30 years and did nothing to become a citizen but she was happy to take all the taxpayer money she could get ?

[Uncle Miltie]

Well, Bye!

[gunnut]

If she thought a week in ICE detention was bad, wait for the next 10 or more years in India.

[sten]

buh-bye

[Opinionated Blowhard]

This just means that she had three decades to get her papers in order. If she would have applied for legal status under Bush, Obama or Biden, she would have gotten it. How can anyone live that long in violation of the law without trying to get into compliance?

[FlingWingFlyer]

There is no statute of limitations on immigration violations.

[metmom]

She shouldn’t have been here illegally.

I don’t believe half the account anyways. It’s WAY too conveniently bleeding heart, poor abused grandma. Sounds fabricated or very exaggerated to me.

[If You Want It Fixed - Fix It]

Sucks when you spy for russia 30 years and then they deport you.