Declared foreigners, discarded lives: Why Assam’s border policies fail women

For months now, Assam has witnessed a steady movement of people, some disappearing overnight, others pushed across international borders, as the state intensifies its crackdown on individuals labelled as ‘illegal immigrants’.

Many deemed ‘declared foreigners’ have reportedly been sent across the Assam–Bangladesh border. Public discourse remains dominated by debates on the NRC, detention centres, migration, and the politics of citizenship.

Yet amid this loud conversation, one group remains almost entirely invisible: the women who are deported, with little scrutiny or accountability. While both men and women are affected, women often bear deeper risks and long-term consequences.

These removals rarely make headlines. There are no press briefings, no courtroom oversight, and no sustained civic engagement. What unfolds instead is a quiet humanitarian crisis, largely undocumented and unacknowledged.

Women and girls, already navigating systemic gender inequalities, face heightened risks at every stage—from detention to their movement toward borders.

Gender-based violence, exploitation, and bureaucratic neglect frequently accompany these procedures, especially when borders become militarised spaces and state action functions as enforcement rather than due process.

Disturbing reports reveal families pushed to the edges of the Assam–Bangladesh border and women stranded in stretches of unclaimed territory, unaccepted by either state.

Behind every ‘declared foreigner’ lies a fractured life: a missing daughter, a mother waiting, or a family searching for answers.

One such case involves a sixty-eight-year-old woman who was declared a foreigner and detained. Her family recounts that she was taken to the border as part of a deportation exercise, after which all communication ceased. Months passed without information despite repeated attempts to trace her.

She was located nearly four months later, a stark reminder of the opacity and lack of accountability that characterise these procedures.

Another distressing incident involved a woman and her eight-month-old daughter, abandoned in unclaimed border terrain.

Transported from a detention camp with inadequate food, she described spending a night in the open, drenched in rain and terrified for her child, after Bangladeshi authorities refused entry and left them stranded in perilous limbo.

Accounts from other women reveal a consistent pattern: limited food and healthcare in detention centres, abrupt transfers without explanation, and the psychological trauma of being left at hostile borders.

These narratives illuminate the lived realities of women and children caught between geopolitical anxieties, legal ambiguity, and humanitarian neglect.

The emerging facts indicate a deepening crisis, even though authorities describe these actions as standard legal procedures.

Security concerns such as border protection, land anxieties, and indigenous rights are frequently cited, and these fears cannot be dismissed.

Yet when the issue is framed only through administrative or security perspectives, the human costs are erased.

Even if concerns about identity or demographic shifts are acknowledged, one must also confront the consequences borne by those displaced in the process, especially women.

Women in politically fragile contexts often carry layers of pre-existing trauma—domestic violence, poverty, structural discrimination—which intensify during mass removal drives.

Their precarious legal status further silences them, making it difficult to report abuse or exploitation. Detention, separation from children, or forced movement can become tools of coercion, easily exploited by traffickers, employers, officials, or others who benefit from their vulnerability.

Children, too, face quiet but significant harms when their mothers are pulled into these procedures. Their access to documents, schooling, healthcare, and emotional stability becomes uncertain the moment a woman is drawn into verification or detention machinery.

In Assam’s border and detention regimes, these safeguards often fail, and a mother’s displacement inevitably disrupts her child’s life. The instability and fear that women endure spill into the emotional and developmental worlds of their children, extending precarity across generations.

To move beyond abstract legal categories, it is essential to foreground these lived experiences. Drawing on the perspectives of scholars like Nira Yuval-Davis and Avtar Brah, the discussion must shift from whether these women are ‘foreigners’—a status still contested—to what happens once the state labels them as such.

The problem is not simply the accuracy of the designation but the vulnerability it produces. Being categorised as a ‘declared foreigner’ fundamentally alters a woman’s everyday life, mobility, access to justice, and bodily security. She is placed under a distinct regime of surveillance, suspicion, and pressure.

An intersectional perspective, as articulated by Kimberlé Crenshaw, becomes crucial here.

Most of the women affected come from working-class backgrounds, and their vulnerability is shaped not only by gender but by poverty, limited resources, lack of documentation, minority identity, and their position within an increasingly securitised political landscape.

Their class position amplifies the likelihood of detention, forced movement, and bureaucratic neglect, making insecurity a deeply lived reality. Statelessness, administrative exclusion, and gendered violence are inseparably linked in their lives.

This is why it becomes necessary to view state actions through a gendered lens. Many women, due to deeply entrenched patriarchal norms, are illiterate or have minimal education and limited familiarity with legal or bureaucratic processes.

Early marriages further distance them from their natal families’ documents; they rely on their husbands’ names as guardians. If their husband is classified as a suspected ‘foreigner’, these women may be more susceptible to arrest, marginalisation, deportation, or border procedures, which heighten their risks and anxiety.

This vulnerability is compounded by the relative silence of activists and civil society. Human rights organisations operate within national security constraints, limiting how far they can intervene.

This constrained space reveals a deeper tension: humanitarian responsibilities risk being overshadowed by procedural compliance.

The question is no longer whether the state should regulate immigration or protect indigenous interests—those responsibilities remain. The real challenge lies in ensuring that such processes do not dehumanise the most vulnerable.

Women must not be reduced to collateral in administrative procedures; their dignity, safety, and agency must remain central to any state action.

What is urgently required is a framework that safeguards women’s rights while addressing national concerns.

Clear protections, consistent monitoring, accessible legal assistance, and transparent protocols are essential to ensure that security measures do not come at the cost of the wellbeing and fundamental rights of those already pushed to the edge.

Views expressed are that of the author and do not reflect EastMojo’s stance on this or any other issue.

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