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.
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.