Balwinder Kaur, right, with her daughter Namjot. (Photo: Courtesy, Sarah Garland, The Queens Courier)

Makhan Singh, under detention at the Wackenhut Detention Center in Springfield Gardens for the past 10 months on charges of immigration violations, participated in a hunger strike for 72 hours to protest living conditions and shortage of food.

The Queens Courier newspaper reported that the 35-year-old Singh has lost 60 pounds since his detention in the past 10 months, missed his second daughter’s birth and has not seen a judge about his case.

Singh is among 200 inmates at the center arrested after a nationwide crackdown against undocumented immigrants following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes. It took threats of two hours of solitary confinement and being shifted to another detention center made Singh break his fast, the paper said.

Meanwhile, Singh’s 24-year-old wife Balwinder Kaur and the two daughters, one 4-years-old and the other 7-months-old, wait for the case to move forward. Singh worked as a driver until immigration officials arrived at his Queens residence and arrested him. The paper said his wife and children now survive on help from family and friends.

Singh came to the U.S. from Punjab in 1997 claiming he was being discriminated against in India. He also claimed he feared for his life there.

Bobby Khan, director of Coney Island Avenue Project, an immigrant advocacy group, was quoted as saying that the conditions in the detention centers are very harsh with some detainees asking to be deported out of sheer frustration.

(Compiled from news dispatches by M. Chooki)