As President Donald Trump ushers in his so-called “Golden Age” for the nation, some Americans are jumping ship. Yale University history professor Marci Shore is relieved to be one of them.
She and her husband, historian Timothy Snyder, had long been on the fence about leaving the United States, Shore told Salon, with professorships at the University of Toronto available to them for at least two years should they have wished to take them. Trump’s reelection in November and the proverbial smoke before the fire in the immediate aftermath made it clear to her that now was the time to pull the trigger.
“I felt like this country had everything right in front of them, and people chose this — a lot of people chose this, and that was heartbreaking,” she said. “And I also felt like, ‘I don’t want to come back to this.’ I don’t want to, and maybe I’m not devoted enough. Maybe I’m not enough of a patriot. But I felt like, ‘I don’t want this. I don’t want this for my kids. I don’t want this environment.'”
Shore is a part of a small but burgeoning group of Americans who have lost faith in their country since Trump’s reclaimed the presidency — who have lost hope that a good future is still possible there …
Tag Archives: Ireland
Guardian: Irish woman detained by US immigration released after 17 days in custody
An Irish woman who was detained by US immigration authorities because of a criminal record dating back almost 20 years has been released after 17 days in custody.
Cliona Ward, 54, who has lived legally in the US for decades, emerged on Wednesday from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility at Tacoma in Washington.
After visiting her sick father in Ireland she had been detained at San Francisco airport on 21 April, causing an outcry in Ireland and the US and a campaign for her release.
Last week a California judge agreed to an application for the original convictions to be formally overturned in a manner that would be recognised at a federal level, paving the way for her release, according to Ward’s lawyers.
The incarceration left Ward traumatised but she was thankful for the support and is now recuperating, her sister, Orla Holladay, wrote on a GoFundMe page. “Cliona is finally in her own bed and we are all ready for some quiet and reflection.”
The Atlantic: Airport Detentions Have Travelers ‘Freaked Out’
Fears of being detained are in overdrive, even if the Trump administration insists that they’re overblown.
Jeff Joseph, a 53-year-old immigration attorney in Colorado, has recently started taking precautions while traveling abroad that, at another time, he would have considered a little paranoid. He leaves his phone at home. Instead, he carries a “burner’’—a device scrubbed of his contact list and communications—in case U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers send him to secondary inspection or seize his electronics when he returns home. Joseph told me his knowledge of immigration law has left him with less confidence, not more, about the risks of crossing U.S. borders during the second Trump administration.
“Among immigration lawyers who are well versed in this, and who know what happens in secondary, there’s a level of anxiety and panic that we’ve never seen before,” said Joseph, the president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “Myself included.”
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Immigration attorneys also note Trump has curbed CBP officers’ ability to allow the entry of migrants or visitors using an authority known as “parole.” So travelers who do not qualify for admission to the United States are more likely to be handed over to ICE for detention and deportation. Although U.S. citizens cannot be denied entry to the United States, all other categories of noncitizens—even, in some cases, legal permanent residents with green cards—are at risk of being denied entry or deemed inadmissible by a CBP officer.