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.
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.
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?
I even noted that specifically.
Because that’s a broad generalization that’s based on the assumption that being well-traveled makes you more likely to flee the law. Her continual travel to and from her home country has no bearing on whether or not she poses a flight risk. If that were true, anyone that moves away from home and regularly travels by car to and from their hometown should be held in custody.
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I’m just going to quote this until you read it apparently. Somehow “hometown” = “Country” to you.
Was she leaving the country legally? Yes.
Was she re-entering the country legally? Yes.
Did she ever have a warrant out for her arrest during those times that she left the country? No.
That’s the bottom line. But for the sake of the argument, I never equated hometown and country. I merely used it as a metaphor to show you how travelling to her home country doesn’t qualify her as a flight risk.
So leaving a town to you is equivalent to the travel it takes to leave the country? You don’t see significant differences between the two? Then I can’t communicate with you on that particular point. We will not come to any consensus there. Especially when you say “I never equated hometown and country. I merely used it as a metaphor” I never did… but did. Your two sentences directly contradict.
How do you know this? She thought her stuff was expunged. Which clearly it wasn’t since apparently they pulled it up. If it’s still in the records somewhere… or she reported it to them inaccurately. That’s inconsistent information and I would expect agents to investigate.
Other than distance traveled, the time afforded to travel said distance, and providing the requisite documents needed to cross a border(which she had), yes. The article doesn’t mention how often she traveled to Ireland. Maybe she went every other year to celebrate Christmas with her family.
No, using a metaphorical comparison does not literally equate the two things being compared. A metaphor suggests that one thing is like another in some figurative or symbolic way, not that they are literally the same.
It says in the article that she presented them with documentation of the expungement of her charges. So if she was able to provide them with documentation, it clearly took place. It shouldn’t take a law degree to figure out that having your criminal records expunged doesn’t wipe any trace of them from government databases. It only removes them from the public eye and prevents them from coming up during background checks for things like housing or employment. The government would still have a record of her prior convictions.
So then not the same at all? And we know she didn’t have all the documents she needed because she had to go get some.
That would have been a month after the initial detainment. That’s why she had to leave to go get the documents. She didn’t have it with her at the initial detainment. That’s my point. She likely filled out some form incorrectly which didn’t match up with what their database says. And now they are detaining her until it’s cleared up by a court. It sucks, sure… but this is how it goes.
What are you not getting about this situation? She traveled with no issue for 2 decades before this. Why would you need to travel with expungement documents in the first place. That doesn’t apply to travel at all, which is why she was released to get them. Being detained by ICE indefinitely isn’t a “that sucks…but that’s just how it goes sometimes” situation. And that’s why there’s an article about it. But if you want keep licking boots, you might just get to the center. I won’t stop you.