An Irish woman who has lived legally in the US for four decades has been detained by immigration officials for the last week because of a criminal record dating back almost 20 years.
Cliona Ward, 54, was detained at San Francisco airport on 21 April after returning from Ireland to visit her sick father and is being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Tacoma, Washington.
Ward holds a green card but has convictions for drug possession from 2007 and 2008, which she believed had been expunged, her family said.
I’m a citizen and I’ve been detained like 100 times and I have a clean record. Detaining people over bs isn’t new. It’s nice that people seem to care at the moment but I bet they don’t care enough to fix it, because most people underneath it all are authoritarian. They’re happy as long as they’re in power and the govt is detaining the “right” people.
You’ve been kept for a week and flown 1000 miles away from your destination hundreds of times?
No but I’ve been detained for no reason way too many times. Honestly this was half the reason I made the comment I did. Every time you’re pulled over for a traffic stop you’re detained. The writers need to make it clear that what is going on goes way beyond a basic detainment.
She has two prior felony drug convictions. She thought those were expunged but they weren’t. So when she indicated otherwise on her paperwork, that triggered an arrest. This probably would have happened under the Biden administration too, but it wouldn’t have made the news.
I find it funny that you’re being downvoted when both upvoted responses to you contradict each other.
She posed no flight risk
You believe this was the first time she traveled to and from Ireland in he past 40 years?
After getting off a plane… Not a flight risk! Literally history of leaving the country regularly.
Regardless, 40 years here and hasn’t naturalized yet? Odd… But yes if she was to have filled out a form incorrectly or differently than she had before she would be detained until it’s cleared up… and immigration judges aren’t really well know for having oodles of free time at the moment. So I’m not sure that length of time in detention is valid to discuss here without also talking about how we don’t have enough judges for how many cases are currently open.
But the article itself says something pretty incorrect.
“Where people have green cards and citizenship rights there shouldn’t be an issue so we will be pursuing this on a bilateral basis to make sure that those who are legitimately entitled to be in the US are free from any challenges or difficulties of this kind,”
That’s wrong. You can lose green card status under a myriad of cases. One of them is simply by leaving the country for an extended period of time. Which the article also fails to outline how long she was in Ireland for.
I don’t see any statement from any immigration body or other officials and I don’t see any evidence that this is related to her previous convictions in the article… They just bring it up out of nowhere for no apparent rhyme or reason. And since they brought it up… they couldn’t confirm? What kind of reporting is this?
the Guardian could not verify this was the case
Why not? Seems like it would be easy to pull up a simple conviction history and see if it’s there.
But yes, your assertion that this sort of stuff happened under Biden is correct. My naturalized grandfather (Who’s lived in the US for ~40 years and has been naturalized for ~30 years) flew a few times under the Biden administration and was held up by immigration at least once that I recall. Mostly because he still retains his original accent and can be hard to understand (Subject-verb-object structure is kind of optional in his native tongue and he still speaks like that’s the case at times. It can be hard to follow).
You’re aware that ‘flight risk’ isn’t a literal term right? Like, it doesn’t mean that there’s a chance they’re going to board a plane and fly away lol
No shit Sherlock.
A person in law enforcement custody who is considered likely to abscond
People who travel regularly are more likely to abscond than someone who doesn’t travel at all… Why do I have to explain something so simple?
Literally history of leaving the country regularly.
I even noted that specifically.
For there to be a flight risk, there would have to be a crime being committed. She’s already done the time for her past conviction, so there’s nothing to flee, and thus no flight risk.
Her leaving the country and coming back is not a crime when she has a valid visa allowing her to do that.
I addressed this… You can lose your green card. If immigration thinks that her green card might not be valid anymore, then it would be a crime to enter the country.
She didn’t have a visa, she had a green card (https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/all-visa-categories.html - green card isn’t a visa and isn’t present on the visa list). And depending on the circumstances of her leaving the country she could have absolutely lost the green card, eg if she left the country for 6 months. This article doesn’t provide enough information to actually understand what happened was wrong. Further since she’s just a green card holder, she likely still has her citizenship to Ireland (though admittedly speculation). So no Visas would have occurred at all in this process at all.
I’m telling you this as a person who holds dual citizenship and my ENTIRE family (except for one person) was immigrants who all fully naturalized. I understand the visa/green card process really well because my mother naturalized and I was old enough to rationalize questions on the matter and directly asked her. Similar stories for both of my grandparents though at different ages.
It may very well be that she only left the country for a couple of days, had all the proper documentation, and filled everything out properly. Then we have issues, but we already know that wasn’t the case since she had to go home to collect more of those documents and the article doesn’t tell us anything meaningful further.
And as my anecdote can speak to, even if you’re naturalized/a citizen. If you say the wrong thing that can be grounds to investigate further, regardless of what administration is in office.
Regardless, 40 years here and hasn’t naturalized yet? Odd.
Nothing odd about it. An Irish passport is measurably better than an American one.
Edit: You can live in a different country for the vast majority of your life and still feel like it’s not your home country. My sister has lived in the UK for over forty years and is very much Irish.
Nothing odd about it. An Irish passport is measurably better than an American one.
You don’t give up an Irish one to get an American one.
Source: Am dual citizen with 2 passports.
You believe this was the first time she traveled to and from Ireland in he past 40 years?
Lol
It’s possible I know a guy from Ireland who lived in the US illegally for decades. He never went home for fear of not being allowed back in.
Hold up. From the article:
She was released to obtain documentation about the allegedly expunged convictions and presented them to Ice officials at San Francisco airport on 21 April, after which she was again detained and sent to the facility at Tacoma, said Holladay.
She brought documentation about the expunged convictions to ICE, so presumably she had some kind of evidence they had been expunged. I am pretty sure she wouldn’t have been arrested under the Biden administration, or any other American administration before that. She posed no flight risk, and a judge would have had to review the evidence before an arrest would have been made.
You know, Due Process and all. It still existed six months ago, and the Constitution was still considered binding by a lot of people in government. Very many people. Some say, the best people.
C’mon let this establish precedent so I can get ‘deported’ to the home country after 150 years.
Also, why did she get sent across the country from San Fran to the SeaTac area? Is Washington acting like the Louisiana of the West Coast, what the fuck?
Where exactly are you coming up with the idea that San Francisco California and Tacoma Washington are “across the country” from one another?
We are a big country and Florida Keys to Maine is about 1800 miles, Wilmington NC to Barstow CA is about 2500 miles
Seems like up and down should count too sometimes. But we need a better word than across, especially if it can’t be safely driven in a single day by a single driver without stopping to sleep.
(San Fran to SeaTac is about 800 miles)
Catholics are not considered white to the white supremacist
Considering the US is going back to the 1800s, no better time to start treating the Irish like shit again.
MAGA will decide they want to deport Irish-Americans. Ireland will respond by saying they don’t let people claim residency that many generations back. MAGA will piss and moan. Eventually they will make a deal with the UK government. The UK government will build a large prison camp in Northern Ireland, right near the border with the Republic of Ireland. Irish Americans will be banished to the camp, in direct line of site from ROI land, until such time as ROI willingly accepts them in as refugees.
The Irish were not considered white until around 1930 or so. When the demographic shifts in the US required we be white in order to stave off the dreaded brown folk. The old bigot who lived next door to me growing up called me a tater tot until her dying day. I remember my grandfather talking about how one day he had bankers basically offering him a loan. Up until that point he was treated like shit at the bank.
Just go to http://www.rsdb.org/search?q=Irish
The English were directly responsible for killing a million Irish people. They get hate for it, but not enough.
The old bigot who lived next door to me growing up called me a tater tot
Prick. I heard two young American girls refer to the Irish as potatoes, in Dublin. They thought nobody could hear them then were properly embarrassed when they saw me.
US is a hostile nation.
