For the record, I'm no fan of ICE/CBP, but it looks like they're just enforcing the law here.
Putting her in a literal prison and in an orange jumpsuit is overkill. Clearly she just screwed up and thought what she was doing was ok, but isn't a threat. Let her go back to the UK and no longer be eligible for ESTA. How is that not sufficient?
> She had previously been staying with a host family in Portland, Oregon, under a similar arrangement after spending some time sightseeing in New York City, where she first arrived from the UK at the start of the year.
This article is like one of those tricky word problems where they try to hide information, and you have to piece it together, but I think the trip was planned for four months, but if she only entered the US after the start of the year, she can't have overstayed a 90-day visa as of yet. Perhaps her plan was to go to Canada 10 days ago and spend the rest of her time there, departing back to the UK from Canada and not transiting the US on the way back; I don't know the details of Canada immigration, but someone elsewhere in the thread indicates a 180 day limit was common; and I'd assume that would start on first entry to Canada, so the duration of the stay would be fine in that case. Or perhaps her plan was to come back to the US after a side trip to Canada and then depart from the US to the UK, in which case her planned trip is outside the limit, but she hasn't overstayed yet.
But I think the issue seems to be more likely because of doing work on a tourist visa, which was subject to scrutiny because Canada denied entry, likely over planning to work on a tourist visa? Canada does have the International Experience Canada (IEC) Program [1] which allows for young adults aged 18 to 35 (18 to 30 in some countries) to work in Canada while visiting, but afaik, the US has nothing similar.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
We should be directing the treatment of such minor offenses through polished administrative pathways and not 10 days in prison. That person will likely not come back ever again, and it's a shame because there's every indication that this woman would be a fine visitor and customer to local businesses, US and Canadian.
They're just here for pure sightseeing under the most amicable of moods. 10 days in prison.
Some do it themselves and are malicious for no good reason, but not literally every time.
Meanwhile, her British MP has relayed the family's request to arrange voluntary departure, so the trip home wouldn't even be at government expense.
ICE has no legitimate excuse to be slow about permitting voluntary departure unless they're planning to prosecute her criminally, think she won't actually go through with the voluntary departure, or think she will commit crimes before voluntarily departing. None of those seem likely in the scenario we're discussing.
The political environment of the Trump administration might very well be an explanation for why they're not quickly permitting this, but it’s just an explanation at most, not an excuse.
Generally I'd expect a deportation process to take quite some time because immigration courts have not been properly staffed. But I would have expected ICE to offer either a withdrawal of application, or voluntary deportation, both of which involve travel arrangements at the alien's expense in order to expedite removal. I think it's probably in the person's better interest to pay for a ticket home (hopefully with some credit for their previously scheduled flight) if they were planning on returning home anyway; better to go home early than sit out your trip in immigration detention.
The problem with any immigration service in the world is that they are dealing with non-citizens which lack most protections citizenship would have given them — which means that it may take its sweet time before courts actually hear her defense and probably decide as you suggest (along with introducing a 3 or 5 year ban on entering the US).
Add to this the 4mo trip on a 90 day tourist visa and I would expect nothing less than detention since they can’t exactly turn her around since CA already turned her away
The countries who can enforce their visa terms, do. And Europeans are no different, some are even worse than US treatment they're getting.
This is not all that ridiculous. What would be ridiculous is if people who have in the past, or would have by the virtue of entering into a country, committed immigration fraud were let in. Or if they were left unhoused and stateless, stuck at a border. Detaining and removing them is much more sensible.
Of course, ideally, it would be much more pleasant for the offender if they were given an option to enter anyway and leave on their own accord. But perhaps this is also an unreasonable expectation when one commits serious offences. Must we be nice to those who don’t respect our laws?
There is a lot to be said about our responsibilities to offenders, the paradox of tolerance, and similar.
It creates yet another person who will come to rightfully hate the US, gets bad press affecting tourism and business, and for what? For a girl that loved the US, misinterpreted or misunderstood something and is staying a little longer, spending more money and having good experiences.
Enforce the law, sure, whatever, but the jumpsuit and 10 days in a detention center are barbaric and unnecessary. There's a reason this wouldn't have happened before a wannabe dictator was in power.
Among other things, this means that you don’t get a public defender if you can’t afford a lawyer for your immigration case.
Should they have put her on house arrest in a hotel room? She doesn't deserve special privileges. A huge swath of the US population would be adamantly against her being treated special.
There were people active in the San Francisco startup scene from multiple countries who would go for a 'holiday' nearby (mexico, canada, etc) for a week every 2-3 months and then get a new 3 month visa on re-entry. One of them told me that after almost two years of that he started getting tougher conversations at re-entry, but was still allowed through.
This is from 2010ish, so maybe things have changed. But it certainly isn't possible to just assume that she broke the rules from that description, because it hinges on extremely technical reading of multiple overlapping legislation and regulation.
Side note on people trying to reason outside their field of knowledge: any American who has never had to deal with visas for incoming people has a useless opinion. The US media on this is hyperpolitical garbage and grievance politics. Not particularly directed at the original poster, just a request to so many indulged Americans who feel informed and entitled on this topic while they are demonstrably wrong.
No, if you read the article carefully it never stated that she had a tourist visa at all. Only that she was told "she should have applied for a working visa, instead of a tourist visa". That's not the same as her possessing a tourist visa. Moreover a "tourist visa" (of 6 months) isn't something you can apply for at the border. If she just showed up at the border, then by all likelihood she's getting in via the Visa Waiver Program, which has a 90 day limit.
So it sounds like what happened was that she drove across the US border from Canada, tried getting in using the Visa Waiver Program, the border guards grilled her, she cracked under pressure (ie. admitted she was going to do stuff inconsistent with the Visa Waiver Program), and they tried to deport her back to Canada. However, Canada doesn't want to take her back so she's stuck in limbo.
But the law should either be applied to everyone equally, or overturned to not be applied at all. "Equally" does not mean you do not account for each individual case's specifics — I was responding to a comment saying there was a "right and wrong way" to apply a law (if it's applied the "wrong way", then law is not applied at all).
I am in favour of abolishing any detention for "illegal immigrants" who agree to voluntary deportation.
Also note that I am not a US citizen, so this is just personal opinion.
This does not mean US should not work to improve those conditions for everyone — I don't see a difference between a Mexican person overstaying or her overstaying from the angle of immigration clerks — it should! US should also certainly adapt laws to avoid any "detention" for people open to "voluntary deportation".
In my non-EU European country, arbitrary application of laws is exactly what's the issue. This leads to rampant corruption and society going crazy (it's not about being a good citizen, it's about not getting caught being a bad one).
AFAIK, US usually resolves that with courts (in this case Immigration Court). That requires a court date which is not as quick to come by.
The way to improve the situation for the future is to introduce changes to the law to allow voluntary deportation for anyone who's not a wanted criminal — but the laws are what they are, and I wouldn't want immigration clerks to have the full power.
No, this is specifically a problem with the US if they withhold many those rights to non citizens. In developed countries existing as a person gives you those rights, not citizenship.
So what are you proposing? Giving someone from an European country better treatment than someone from South America? Sounds like racism/white privilege to me.
>It creates yet another person who will come to rightfully hate the US, gets bad press affecting tourism and business, and for what? For a girl that loved the US
South Americans are fleeing prosecution from drug gangs or economic devastation. That's a far stronger justification than some girl who "loved the US" and wants to backpack for a few months.
>misinterpreted or misunderstood something and is staying a little longer, spending more money and having good experiences.
As other people have mentioned, it's basically plastered everywhere during the ESTA process that you can't work. "misinterpreted or misunderstood" seems like a stretch.
I agree that 10 days in lockup feel excessive for this, but I honestly, as someone who has traveled and crossed many borders, I have a hard time finding sympathy. I wouldn't expect to be treated well at many, many border crossings if I was found to have broken the law while I was in country.
It sure would be nice if the USG scolded her and told her to get back to court in 14 days for her immigration trial, but that's a laughable misread of the current government's position on immigration. And Trump has been ringing that bell loudly for a decade now. Immigrants arriving on a tourist visa and simply staying forever is the most common form of illegal immigration and this is exactly how I would expect the Trump administration to treat someone in her position.
You can have a system that treats people humanely. We choose not to.
... I am us citizen presenting with us passport, look and talk extremely white with no foreign accent.
If you have a hard time finding sympathy for someone who made a mistake that harmed nobody, was told they have to leave, and then was locked up for a week and a half and not allowed to leave, I suggest you work on that because it really should not be difficult.
Historically, (as in: during periods where Trump is not president) it is not.
No, the proposal is to treat all such cases equivalently, regardless of national origin.
That means no more prison/orange jump suit/inacessibility for Europeans or people from South America who screw up their visa conditions.
And in this case, it's not about "special priviledges", it's about the ridiculousness of this process being applied to anyone in her circumstances.
Second, I disagree with your stance on strict enforcement without discretion, this often lead to unjust outcomes. Laws exist to serve justice, not just to be enforced blindly.
Third, addressing your "ignorance of the law" argument, sure it may not be a defense, but the expectation that everyone fully understands a convoluted legal system is unreasonable.
I feel bad for her, but not _that_ bad. Again, when I'm traveling in a foreign country, I make it a point know the laws and not break them. Her entire trip was predicated on violating US law so...
Overstaying a visa isn't even illegal and extremely difficult to enforce, and working informally is trivial and pretty much impossible to enforce in a country where citizens don't have to carry ID (sometimes even to vote). Anyone 100+ miles into the country on a tourist visa is basically home free, probably even for life and triply so if they speak English and look European.
So what the US does is put the meanest scariest motherfuckers around in CBP/HSI at the border and then say whatever they need to turn the crank, which does little to someone who knows what's happening but great at scaring a naive German woman who doesn't realize border officers are basically playing a confidence game.
It's what it is under Trump. 3 months ago Someone in this situation wouldn't have been detained for this long and in the news for such a minor offense.
> This does not mean US should not work to improve those conditions for everyone
This wasn't happening before for cases like this. All the worst CBP agents are empowered now and have no checks on their authority. That's the problem.
No one is proposing anything like this. Why invent a strawman?
> "misinterpreted or misunderstood" seems like a stretch.
Not if you consider work to mean getting cash in exchange.
Edit: just remembered the time they were enraged they had to let me in so threatened to revoke my passport.
Why? On what basis?
Your description of "a girl that loved the US, misinterpreted or misunderstood something and is staying a little longer, spending more money and having good experiences" might not have any explicit racial/ethnic element, but it's pretty obvious you're selecting for a certain demographic when you're using criteria like that.
Or are you arguing that nobody should be treated that way? In which case why not just say something like "nobody should be treated this way", instead of qualifying it with so many descriptors?
The point was discretion should have been used this care regardless of other times it has been.
You seem to be replying to the wrong comment. I never said anything remotely like that.
The article is confusing though. This BBC article has a much clearer and more detailed timeline of her travels.
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/documents/constitution-100-mile-border-...
Since about 2001, it has been limited in the US to 180 days. In Germany, detention is reviewed every six months, and some people are granted exceptional leave to remain, but it is not capped.
Immigration offenses are much more severe than an administrative penalty for speeding. Largely, no one debates that.
Treating every possible infraction like a hard felony is both costly to the taxpayer and chilling to tourists.
The approach of ICE appears to be: Nobody has rights, no search is unreasonable, harvest all the data, then lock everyone up and put them at the back of a hearing queue.
Post-9/11 America is a horrible border experience for legitimate tourists. It is repeatedly noted about how unwelcome you are and how very little you need to do to be incarcerated and deported.
Show one comparable story from an EU country.
It's not just about security, they admitted they fuck with innocent people just for enjoyment. They cannot be stopped as the courts don't really see them as beholden to the Constitution, it's a huge legal hole and the officers have a crystal clear understanding of this.
This is also why when they needed an unbeholden army to send to Portland to pick up protesters in unmarked vans, they used CBP.
https://holdcbpaccountable.org/2016/08/09/cervantes-v-united...
At an international airport, there's a large transit area where someone can dwell until they find a departing option.
They were drilled for hours until finally they let them in: it required producing a lot of paperwork by the company hosting the event on top of the traveller's documentation.
If you've not passed US border control as a foreigner, you really have no idea of what a pleasant experience it... is not.
They catch and detain people. Sometimes, some of the people with jobs, homes, families —something to lose— get bail after a hearing, but they only account for ~50% of ICE detainees. When you also factor that the average ICE detention is over 50 days, many of the people who attain bail, are only doing so after many weeks in prison.
I'm not saying you agree with that, but you seemed to be [at least partially] rebutting the previous comment. I think this case, and many like it could be dealt with that don't involve being kidnapped at the border. Either just rebuffing their entry, or trusting them enough and allowing them to return home via an internal airport if they already have a return ticket.
Or even just trusting people until they've committed a crime. Many people with border issues are merely suspected that they might be intending to work, intending to stay.
Being locked up in a detention center for days (and in solitary confinement in at least one recent case) for this sort of violation would have been rare to non-existent.
I crossed the US border many times as a foreigner, although I am now a citizen. The easiest kind of foreigner though - white, anglo, male, middle class. Even those qualifications don't seem like enough to stop the absurd responses from ICE anymore, though.
I get it that US could be nicer, but it was Canada who denied entry first (the girl was coming into Canada after being in the US for weeks prior to that).
I just don't think this has changed due to Trump: I could very well see this happening prior to Trump.
Somebody mentioned how average detainee wait for a court date is 50 days! Trump has not been in power long enough to bring the average that high.
The fact that courts are slow is a problem unto itself that should be solved independently.
I am pretty sure the law does not have an option of "be escorted to the nearest international airport/exit at deportee's cost", but in this case, having an option to leave yourself in 48h or face even harsher bans would have likely worked.