“I haven’t been able to cry much because nothing is making sense,” she told the Guardian, calling from the El Valle detention center where she has been held without explanation for a month.

In the interim, she said, she has to live in the horror movie version of “Groundhog Day” – each day, she wakes up in a windowless warehouse block. Because of her fluency in English, and her familiarity with many immigration policies, Batra said she had been trying to help some of the other women who are detained with her request for confidential calls and access to attorneys.

Batra had been on her way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for work on 17 March when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer stopped her at the airport and asked: “Do you know that you are here illegally?” In a sworn deposition, Batra said that she responded, “No” – and clarified that she had a valid status and a legal work permit. She was taken away in an unmarked SUV, she said.