As someone who lived in the U.S. for several years on TN status. Based on the information provided, I find this story appalling. The woman came in through the front door, trying to follow the correct process and they’re treating her incredibly inhumanely (and everyone else). You shouldn’t be punished like this for somehow messing up your paperwork at the border. I know even before Trump the treatment applicants received was unnecessarily antagonistic. My car was thoroughly searched at least once, because I had the temerity to follow the proper process of applying for TN status. Watching the border security shows from Australia and Canada, they give you a lot of opportunity to avoid being handcuff, whereas the U.S. customs and border folks seem eager to do it.
Can’t have those pesky foreigners doing specialty medical work in the US. And let’s make sure that those elitist Ivy League schools can’t have their immigration attorneys help their employees.
Brown said he won’t know the reason officials with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection gave for the detention until he can talk to Alawieh. And as of Friday afternoon, Alawieh was still being held at Logan Airport, technically not yet back on U.S. soil and therefore not allowed legal counsel, Brown said.
Your papers are out of order.
“It was just said that his green card was flagged,” said Astrid Senior, his mother. She said she didn’t hear from her son directly until Tuesday, when she learned he’d been hospitalized.
Senior described Schmidt being “violently interrogated” at Logan Airport for hours, and being stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials, and being put back onto a chair.
She said Schmidt told her immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card. She said he was placed on a mat in a bright room with other people at the airport, with little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation, and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.
That last one may not be new with this administration. A pizza place in my town closed unexpectedly, about 20 years ago. It turned out the owner had been deported to Greece for a drunk driving offense. He was a legal permanent resident (green card holder) who had lived in the US since childhood, and spoke no Greek.
I thought it was crazy at the time, and still think it’s crazy. Sure, throw him in jail, never let him drive again. Deportation is hardly the punishment that fits the crime. But it was apparently legal then. That was… Probably under Clinton? And it sounds like this woman plead guilty to a felony.
There is usually a time limit.
So you can commit a crime and go to jail (and not be deported), but it cannot be a felony and it cannot be for something over a certain amount (IIRC 2 years or so).
This lady copped to a felony, so that assume that when she was put in front of an immigration judge she would have been deported fairly quickly.
As a general concept, I have no issues with revoking green cards for people that commit felonies. However deporting someone to a country they have never been to where they don’t speak the language is pretty rough, particularly a repressive state like Laos.
Agree, but what would be the correct action in this case? Deport her to Thailand? I wouldn’t think Thailand would necessarily want to take a non-citizen convicted of a felony in another country.
I think the ideal answer would be that once a green card holder has been resident in the US for more than n years, the continued validity of their green card should become a component of sentencing for a felony conviction, and that sentencing guidelines should consider whether the felon would be reasonably safe and able to function after deportation.
I’ll admit, however, that there are presumably huge jurisdictional headaches preventing (typically) a state criminal judge from ruling on something that’s a federal civil matter.
Text below is from an NYT discussion at (probably paywalled): https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/us/politics/trump-alien-enemies-act-deportations-venezuelans.html?smid=url-share
I think Krasnov might actually have a point…although I’m extremely skeptical that ICE would properly differentiate between Tren de Aragua members and normal Venezuelans.
Eh, I’m ok with a felony conviction meaning automatic deportation. Want to stay in our country? Don’t commit felonies.
While in principle I agree, the deportation machine is designed to deny folks shoved through it many of the rights afforded criminals.
We also have a criminal justice system that has a disappointing false conviction rate, and where games and deception are used to get confessions and guilty pleas that aren’t necessarily appropriate.
Given that we’ve deported someone who’s lived most of their life in the US to a country with a problematic government, where they don’t even speak the language… even if they’re guilty, they ought to be able to demand judicial review.
Judge says no, Trump says he doesn’t care.
Apparently we’re going to ignore the fact that courts tell the government what it can and cannot do outside the US all the time, and go with the “we broke the law so fast that you can’t do anything” defense.
Jewish student at Columbia defending Khalil:
Wait. Don’t tell me. They were over the Gulf of America and rulings don’t apply there.
Here we a) have El Salvador’s self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator” laughing at the US justice system, and b) the current US Secretary of State retweeting it. Good times.
Obviously we wouldn’t send just anybody to be tortured to death in a foreign prison. These must be some really bad dudes. Let me see…
…Oh wait, their names are undisclosed. And some have no criminal records. And no evidence has been given.
Hmm. Well, I’m sure I’m sure they are really scary guys anyway. And we are at war, and during war you need to take extreme measures. Like when we interned Japanese people during WW2. That was a good idea right?
Well, here we are again, at war with Venezuela, or at war with gangs? A sort of war anyway.