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I'm not sure why you think they need new laws to detain you and deport a non-citizen, especially when your paperwork is no good. If you show up to a US border c

I'm not sure why you think they need new laws to detain you and deport a non-citizen, especially when your paperwork is no good. If you show up to a US border checkpoint and you are not a US citizen, that is standard procedure. It is also a situation where border control has very, very broad powers and entrants have very few of the protections that you might think they have. These are not wildly unpredictable procedures, and as far as I can tell, they have basically not changed - enforcement of illegal crossings is going up a lot, though. The huge difference between now and 6 months ago is that reporters are now seeking out these stories (see how Obama's CBP was putting kids in cages for years without a peep and it took until Trump's first term to get any reporting on the conditions under which families were detained). The same goes at most other country borders. If I try to force my way into Germany (for example) with no permission to enter and then refuse to leave, you better believe I am headed to a German prison until they can make arrangements to deport me. It's messy and gross business, certainly. People getting arrested usually is. It is not something to fearmonger over, though, to the millions of visitors who have clean and valid permission to enter the US.

runako 2y ago
> why you think they need new laws to detain you and deport a non-citizen I did not suggest that they did. That's not what they did, though, is it? She is from Canada; there are flights to Canada all the time. There is no indication that she was indigent and unable to pay for her own return flight after being refused admission to the US. I think most reasonable people would agree that refusing entry to a person not legally allowed to enter is one of the core duties of immigration personnel. If they had put her on the next flight back to Canada, there would have been no story here. What we did instead was we incarcerated her for weeks across multiple prison facilities. There is no suggestion that anything caused this beyond her paperwork being "no good," as you say. I'm not getting into the politics of it. I'm just saying that I would not get on a plane to go to a country where a visa snafu could land me in prison for weeks, and I can understand why people would not want to take that risk. That's the part that's not normal among civilized countries. > Government procedure doesn't just turn on a dime. People could reasonably disagree with this point, especially where the current administration is concerned.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  > I did not suggest that they did. That's not what they did, though, is it? She is from Canada; there are flights to Canada all the time. There is no indication that she was indigent and unable to pay for her own return flight after being refused admission to the US. > What we did instead was we incarcerated her for weeks across multiple prison facilities. There is no suggestion that anything caused this beyond her paperwork being "no good," as you say. We don't have all the facts here, and even though return flights happen "all the time," they will usually put you on a relatively cheap flight back because you're going to be sent a bill for that flight and they don't expect you to pay. Last-minute flights are always expensive. This is what happened with the British tourist as well, they essentially held her in prison until a cheap enough flight. In a sane country, the cost of the imprisonment would factor into this, but it appears that US border control does not care about that. They should have given her an option to pay for her own earlier flight out if she wanted to. It sounds like they may not have, but again, we have a source that has the same credibility level as Alex Jones here. It's entirely possible she spent that two weeks trying have a lawyer in the US to fight to clear her visa issues and she failed. However, if you refuse to pay for your own ticket, what are they supposed to do other than detain you? To be clear, I generally have very few sympathies for the idea of someone having a casual "visa snafu." It is not hard to read the procedures for any country you enter and get the appropriate documents lined up far in advance.
  - runako 2y ago
    Clearly our sympathies are calibrated differently around international travel. :-) I am wondering how you think about stories like this. This is not to attack you, I legitimately am curious as to the thought process. You say she has no credibility. Great, why do you then go along with her assertion that she was ever detained, or even in fact ever traveled to the US? None of us have verified any of this beyond seeing the article in The Guardian... If you believe her when she says that she came to the US and was detained for two weeks, why do you not also believe her when she says she offered to pay for her return trip (as she says in the article)? How do you decide which parts of her story are worthless, and which parts have some fidelity to the truth? Again, I am really more interested now in the thought process than the politics or whatever of this story.

runako 2y ago

> why you think they need new laws to detain you and deport a non-citizen I did not suggest that they did. That's not what they did, though, is it? She is from Canada; there are flights to Canada all the time. There is no indication that she was indigent and unable to pay for her own return flight after being refused admission to the US. I think most reasonable people would agree that refusing entry to a person not legally allowed to enter is one of the core duties of immigration personnel. If they had put her on the next flight back to Canada, there would have been no story here. What we did instead was we incarcerated her for weeks across multiple prison facilities. There is no suggestion that anything caused this beyond her paperwork being "no good," as you say. I'm not getting into the politics of it. I'm just saying that I would not get on a plane to go to a country where a visa snafu could land me in prison for weeks, and I can understand why people would not want to take that risk. That's the part that's not normal among civilized countries. > Government procedure doesn't just turn on a dime. People could reasonably disagree with this point, especially where the current administration is concerned.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
> I did not suggest that they did. That's not what they did, though, is it? She is from Canada; there are flights to Canada all the time. There is no indication that she was indigent and unable to pay for her own return flight after being refused admission to the US. > What we did instead was we incarcerated her for weeks across multiple prison facilities. There is no suggestion that anything caused this beyond her paperwork being "no good," as you say. We don't have all the facts here, and even though return flights happen "all the time," they will usually put you on a relatively cheap flight back because you're going to be sent a bill for that flight and they don't expect you to pay. Last-minute flights are always expensive. This is what happened with the British tourist as well, they essentially held her in prison until a cheap enough flight. In a sane country, the cost of the imprisonment would factor into this, but it appears that US border control does not care about that. They should have given her an option to pay for her own earlier flight out if she wanted to. It sounds like they may not have, but again, we have a source that has the same credibility level as Alex Jones here. It's entirely possible she spent that two weeks trying have a lawyer in the US to fight to clear her visa issues and she failed. However, if you refuse to pay for your own ticket, what are they supposed to do other than detain you? To be clear, I generally have very few sympathies for the idea of someone having a casual "visa snafu." It is not hard to read the procedures for any country you enter and get the appropriate documents lined up far in advance.
- runako 2y ago
  Clearly our sympathies are calibrated differently around international travel. :-) I am wondering how you think about stories like this. This is not to attack you, I legitimately am curious as to the thought process. You say she has no credibility. Great, why do you then go along with her assertion that she was ever detained, or even in fact ever traveled to the US? None of us have verified any of this beyond seeing the article in The Guardian... If you believe her when she says that she came to the US and was detained for two weeks, why do you not also believe her when she says she offered to pay for her return trip (as she says in the article)? How do you decide which parts of her story are worthless, and which parts have some fidelity to the truth? Again, I am really more interested now in the thought process than the politics or whatever of this story.