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.
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.
Well if you read the article it says she left to visit Ireland earlier this year and returned in March. There’s no way she invalidated her green card by staying out of the country for 6 months. It also states she visited Ireland many times during the last 20 years and never had an issue.
I did read the article… but I will admit that I missed “earlier this year” specifically. But I did notice the dates that came after that.
She took over a month to get her documents to the officials. I now see it as much more likely that she is detained again specifically because she missed a deadline to return with the documents and they’re detaining her specifically because doing that is considered a flight risk, until the matter is resolved.
A far more likely scenario is that she needed to schedule an appointment with an official to present the documents. She was released from custody on the 21st and presented them exactly a month later.