This interpreter helped migrants navigate immigration court. Then she was detained by DHS | CNN

As a courtroom interpreter in Texas’ immigration system, it was Meenu Batra’s job to make sure migrants understood the proceedings of immigration court – the good and the bad. In March, Batra was exposed to the other side of the immigration system when she was detained by the Department of Homeland Security after decades spent living and working in the United States. Batra, a mother of four US citizens who transitioned to interpreting in other courtrooms after years spent in immigration court, was detained for more than six weeks – a harrowing experience from which she says she’s still recovering. She came to the US in 1991, she said, a fragile 18-year-old traumatized by the killing of her parents in a spate of anti-Sikh violence in India. She rejoined her older siblings who were already in the US and applied for asylum. Batra declined to give details about how she entered the US but was given a final order of removal by an immigration judge in 2000, under President Bill Clinton, according to DHS, her attorney and a judge’s ruling in her current case. But the same day, she was granted withholding of removal, a legal protection similar to asylum that says she cannot be d

May 26, 2026 → May 26, 2026