Once seen as a pathway to safety and belonging, the US visa process has become a source of dread. Even senior citizens who have lived in the country for decades, raised families, paid taxes, and followed every rule are no longer spared. Routine appointments now come with the risk of detention.
A case in point is the ordeal of 60-year-old Babblejit Bubbly Kaur who has lived in the US since 1994.
According to reports, she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on December 1 while attending a routine fingerprinting appointment for her green card.
Babblejit Kaur was at the front desk of the ICE office when several federal agents entered. She was summoned into a room. There, agents informed her family that she was being arrested. For several hours, her family did not even know where she had been taken.
Later, they learned she had been transferred overnight to Adelanto, a former federal prison now used as an ICE detention center.
She had been in the final stage of getting her green card, the report added. She has an approved green card petition from one of her daughters, a US citizen. Her husband, Amarjit Singh, also holds a green card.
Her arrest came just days after they celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary in Long Beach.
Media outlets presented vivid details about the occasion – the way they held a mint-frosted cake and smiled as their daughter Joti Kaur took photos. Little did they realise that their lives would turn upside down.
The couple married in 1984, the year violence against Sikhs erupted in India.
The eldest son, Harman Singh, later recalled how those years shaped his parents’ lives. He shares his saga with a media house, detailing the way his parents watched friends, cousins, and neighbours disappear. Many were later found dead.
A decade later, the family fled. They arrived in the US in 1994 at a New York airport with three young children and very little money. They entered a long and daunting asylum process. But they endured, worked, and built a life.
Rebuilding life
In Long Beach, Babblejit Kaur became known as Bubbly.
Along with her husband, she ran Natraj Cuisine of India and Nepal on 2nd Street in Belmont Shore for over two decades. The restaurant became a cherished part of the Long Beach community.
Amarjit Singh first worked as a waiter at Natraj’s Laguna Beach location. He later transferred to Long Beach. Eventually, the couple became the face of the restaurant.
They worked more than 12-hour days. They managed daily operations until leaving in 2020.
Natraj was like a fourth child, their family said. When she wasn’t at the restaurant, Babblejit Bubbly Kaur worked as a cashier at the Belmont Shore Rite Aid. She worked there for 25 years.
Earlier this year, Rite Aid closed its remaining locations and she lost her job.
Recently, she had been preparing to return to restaurant work at Royal Indian Curry House, a new venture still in development.
Hardships and endurance
This year had already been hard. Her husband was diagnosed with cancer. She was laid off, even though the family leaned on her.
She handled paperwork, learned English, and got a driver’s license. The family turned to her whenever decisions had to be made.
On the morning of the appointment, she felt that something wasn’t right.
Joti Kaur said that her mother had called that morning and seemed anxious. She added that she wished she had stayed on the phone with her a little longer, as her mother already knew something wasn’t right.
Fingerprinting appointments were nothing new for the family. They had been navigating asylum proceedings since 1994.
The two oldest children, including Harman Singh, became US citizens. Joti Kaur has legal status under DACA. Her father has a green card.
Only Babblejit Kaur was still waiting.
The government already had her fingerprints on file. That is why the family was confused by the appointment notice.
“You have a hearing coming up and it’s like, if they don’t go, they’re in trouble. If they go, they’re in trouble,” Harman Singh was quoted as saying. “They set it up in such a way that they’re going to get the result they want.”
Joti Kaur collapsed at work when she heard her mother had been detained.
“I tell her, ‘Anytime you’re thinking of me, I was already thinking of you,’” she reportedly said. “You’re literally the only thing I can think about, and getting you out of there.”
Her mother was taken to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.
Noise in the dungeon
She is held in a large dorm-style room with dozens of other detainees. The lights never turn off.
The noise is constant. Often, it is the crying of newly arrived detainees. Babblejit Kaur struggles to sleep past 2 am. She is lucky to get a few hours of rest.
She has been allowed to see family during restricted visiting hours. Many visits require waiting an entire day for just a brief meeting.
Her arrest was carried out by FBI agents. Laura Eimiller, the FBI’s media coordinator, confirmed the arrest was “part of our ongoing assistance to ICE relative to immigration enforcement.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Babblejit Kaur’s green card had not been approved and that she has a final order of removal signed by an immigration judge.
Her lawyer filed a habeas corpus complaint, asking a court to review the legality of her detention.
Congressman Robert Garcia, who represents Long Beach, intervened.
He filed a petition with US Citizenship and Immigration Services to expedite her green card, citing the urgency of her husband’s cancer care. His office also sent requests to ICE and Adelanto for her release.
“We are going to do everything we can to bring her home,” Garcia reportedly said. “These horrific actions continue to terrorise hardworking and good people who are trying to make our community a better place.”
He also said, “We’re encouraging people to do things the right way and to show up to appointments, and then we’re detaining them at appointments that we invited them to.”
“The Long Beach community is outraged about this,” Garcia said. “It’s absolutely crazy and inhumane. It’s no way to treat people.”
Support and empathy
Meanwhile, community support poured in. A GoFundMe raised over $26,000. A Change.org petition gathered more than 1,600 signatures.
A popular Long Beach food group on social media shared the news. That post helped bring national attention to the case.
Harman Singh said that it felt like mourning a loved one’s death, because his mother and father were physically still in the world, yet he could not reach out to them.
He added that the vacuum and gap they were experiencing were widespread across America. This was not just their story. He also noted that hundreds of thousands of families across the country were going through similar heartbreak, with massive ripple effects.
For the first time in decades, Babblejit Kaur and her husband were sleeping in separate beds, and neither was getting much sleep. Harman Singh explained that it was already hard to know his father was battling cancer with his mother by his side, and now both experienced a sense of loneliness. He said the family felt helpless and unable to fix the situation.
Guilt weighed heavily on the children. Joti often felt it at night, remembering how cold her mother must be, while Harman experienced it whenever he put on a jacket or turned on the hot water. Every missed dinner and every rushed phone call added to the burden. Joti said she wished she could take back those missed dinners to spend more time with her mother, as she did not know when the next one would be.
Inside Adelanto, Babblejit Kaur has found a fragile support system. She has met women of all ages, including one who is 85. When Harman visited her for the first time in early December, he recalled that cheers erupted from inside the facility. He said this was what the women did when someone was bonded out.
Harman Singh mentioned that there was a sense of camaraderie among the women, who were like, “We’re in this together,” which Babblejit Kaur was very grateful for. She had girls to talk to and said that without them, she would be in depression.
Babblejit Kaur has bonded with two other Indian women. They pray together and ration milk to make tea. One of the women is younger and calls her “mama.”
Yet, without Babblejit Kaur, there can’t be healing for the family. The US was supposed to be a place to live without fear, but for this family, it was starting to feel like a familiar nightmare.
The fight to bring Babblejit Bubbly Kaur home continues.
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