After Years In Limbo -- More Immigrant Detainees Choose 'Voluntary' Deportation

SAN FRANCISCO--On April 30, U.S. agents removed human rights lawyer and prominent Sikh nationalist Harpal Singh Cheema from his Yuba County jail cell, told him to change into the musty old clothes he'd been wearing when he was taken into custody in 1997, and transported him, turban-less and barefoot, to the San Francisco International Airport. Not allowed to call his wife, Singh, 48, was placed on a plane to New York, then to Delhi, India -- a country where local authorities had detained him without charge and tortured him on four separate occasions years before.

After spending more than eight years in a Marysville, Calif., jail -- much of it in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement -- Singh gave up on getting a fair trial in the United States, according to his lawyer. Earlier this year, he waived protection under the Convention Against Torture and told American authorities to go ahead and deport him back into the hands of his torturers.

His case stands as another example of what some contend is a growing phenomenon: the federal government's abuse of its detention powers when it cannot pursue criminal charges against an immigrant or elicit a final deportation order. In such instances, immigrant advocates allege, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) simply keeps detainees behind bars until they give up their legal cases and leave the country.

"Even in cases where you get a favorable [court] decision, the person is still not set free," Aarti Shahani, co-founder and organizer at Families for Freedom, says. "I think it's strategic on their part. They rely on detention to wear people down."

Singh's problems arose as a result of his activism for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan, in his native Punjab. An Indian army attack on Sikh holy site the Golden Temple in June, 1984, turned a long-simmering Sikh independence movement into a bloody conflict that claimed up to 40,000 lives over the next decade.

Singh attended rallies, organized political events, raised money and represented and hid Sikh youth accused of being militants, according to evidence presented at his trial and phone interviews with this reporter in 2003.

The last time he was in the custody of Punjab police, it took an Amnesty International campaign and an Indian Supreme Court investigation to gain his release. Then, in the Spring of 1993, Singh and spouse Rajvinder Kaur fled to the United States and applied for asylum. They settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Singh got a job as a truck driver, and they had a son. But Singh's fund-raising and communications efforts on behalf of Khalistan soon ran him afoul of the FBI.

In November 1997, the feds accused Singh of being a terrorist based on "classified" intelligence, and locked him up.

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