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?
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).
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.
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.
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).
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 am us citizen presenting with us passport, look and talk extremely white with no foreign accent.
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.
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.
[1]: https://www.aclu.org/documents/constitution-100-mile-border-...
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.
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.