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.
US is a hostile nation.
I have a close friend from Venezuela, who was a warded citizenship on December, so she thinks she’s safe. I’m keeping quiet, because I don’t want to scare her, but Venezuelans, who used to enjoy a special immigration privileges in America because their country was being led by a rogue dictator, has become one of the most demonized groups in America.
The MAGA Nazis don’t respect anything, and having a green card or even citizenship isn’t going to save anyone. They want to deport people who were actually BORN here, they definitely want to kick out every person that was born elsewhere.
My friend, also naturalized and from Venezuela, knows he’s not safe. We’ve talked. It sucks.
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 2000 miles away from your destination hundreds of times?
Just wait until they figure out where Kash Patel is “really” from. Bet you the crocodile tears will run like rivers.
No, it’s ok. He’s one of the good ones. /s
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?
The 800 miles of separation North-South.
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)
Um, Seattle and SF are on the same coast…maybe there’s just a bigger concentration camp set up there
Wait… why would they detain her let alone deport? She has legal residency.
They’ve also “deported” (exiled is a better word) actual citizens. Someone on a green card has less protection than that.
If she believed the drug charges were expunged and they were not, then she likely filled out the wrong immigration form and was granted residency because she “lied” on a government immigration document.
With a drug charge she very likely would not have been approved for residency. But this also means it’s an oversight by USCIS, because the applicants criminal history should have been reviewed at the time of her application.
Something isn’t adding up here.
There was a story a couple weeks ago about another person getting deported on expunged charges. I’m guessing some agencies still keep records after expungement (I’ve heard they still show up when getting security clearance), and they’re using that data.
My bet is on it was expunged and this is them just using arrest records to justify bullshit. Now they will call her a CRIMINAL and anything they do is fine, as she is a dirty criminal.
The really really scary part is that they can arrest someone now on trumped up charges (like a judge that rules kidnapping is bad) then later “deport” them do to past arrests.
Well it’s simple really—because the fascists decree it to be so.
This makes residency permits completely worthless. Greencard holders other visa holders can all just be randomly detained when traveling.
Yes, that’s the whole idea
Yes.
US Citizens have been getting deported, we’re far past that already.
These were all minors of deported parents no? At least there’s a bad reason for it.
Tbf this was also a bad reason to detain this woman. They’ll expand it to native-born American criminals, and then “”“criminals.”“”
Just don’t do any crimes.
\s
They have quotas to fill. Makes sense for them to pick these low-hanging fruits.
Catholics are not considered white to the white supremacist
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.
An I remember that one. It’s good. I’ll see your solid paddywhackery and raise you this (which I honestly pissed myself laughing at the first time I saw it).
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.
“I bet she has tattoos!”
I’d be willing to bet the universal common denominator for anyone who isn’t brown is simply that they’re antifascist.
Gotta say “antifa” (ann-TEE-fuh) so it sounds like a bad thing. Like an exotic gang, like al Qaeda or something. That way, normal people think antifa is the enemy, and in doing so, they support fascism without even knowing it.
Naming and pronunciation are key. They got half of America terrified of a fucking train halfway across the world.
They should have called it antifash or something more catchy. Antifa needs better PR people.
Same reasoning behind using DEI instead of the actual words that acronym represents.
But she’s white!? (Sort of /s)
she is a woman, aka dei, so thats a no-no for incel magats.
I guess the Irish and Italians aren’t white any more. We’re getting closer to pinning down the time period where America was ‘great’.
As a Jewish person, I think I can see where this is going
it always ends up being jews in the end. first they came for the intellectuals, but the intellectuals already fled the country, then its race, poc, than the LGBTQ+ and then the jews, after that its non-loyalist supporters of the regime. at the same time getting rid of the opposition parties.
I’m worried about anyone who isn’t very white/“only American”
Also anyone who isnt a WASP
Going? We’ve already arrived.
Despite the rise of anti-semitism, I actually think you guys might survive this one. I’m worried about the Italians, who only recently got their white status tentatively approved
Nah, I’d bet a sly Italian person slipping something about “the mob/mafia” in conversation with the maga morons would have maga rethinking antagonizing Italians.
Plus, my wife has literal family ties to the mob (she’s part Sicilian)
Looking at the neo nazi groups rising in popularity makes me think otherwise
I expect proving that you own some of Trump’s memecoin will be the only way to avoid deportation soon. The god emperor can forgive any sin if you kiss the ring
Mark of the Be Best?
More like mark of the hambeast.
I’m going to get 666 tattooed on my hand just to fuck with these people. I’m getting pissed off and it’s gonna get me in trouble.
“Why do you have 999 tattooed on your hand?”
“It’s not, you’re looking at it upside down”
“Ahhh…”
gonna get me in trouble.
Use your head and make good trouble.
It would be hilarious to see this regime shooting itself in both feet before shooting itself in the head, if this weren’t some route to a full-blown ‘eMerGENcy’ which they can then use to deactivate democracy all together.
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.
Well the article states explicitly that she traveled frequently between the US and Ireland and never had an issue before. Things have changed dramatically under this administration.
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.
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.
She has a green card
