Legendary British R&B singer is in ICE Lockup - Jane Eugene

[Demovictory9]

Overstayed visa by 26 years. Was picked up trying to cross into Canada

[Scrivener7]

1. She was LEAVING! What possible reason could there be to pick her up?

[Demovictory9]

2. Essy picking at borders..doesnt matter if coming or going

[EllieBC]

21. Canada turned her away.

It happens more often than you think.

[PittBlue]

3. Yeah, she's a real threat. 🙄

I really do not want to live here anymore.

[Warpy]

5. I do, it's my home

and after 26 years, unless they can come up with a criminal record for her, it's hers, too. They should just get her a green card and send her back to wherever she's been living.

This is my home. I'm not going anywhere. I just want jackbooted thugs with quotas to fill to back the fuck off and I want the people who issued their orders and their quotas to go to prison. Alligator Auschwitz sounds nice this time of year. Maybe some of the people who fell in love with this crazy quilt of a country enough to overstay their visas for decades will be willing to act as guards once their green cards come through.

I can dream, right?

[malaise]

4. A lot of crap is going on but I have to ask

Why is anyone so careless - why would anyone remain in any country without sorting out her/his immigration papers?
26 years - seriously? Rubbish dat.

[Demovictory9]

7. Person has to leave for 10 years

[ancianita]

12. Sure, I'll give it a shot...

The problem with this one is that the punishment doesn't fit the so-called crime of carelessness; iow, her crimeless life doesn't merit what amounts to death camp detention, which is against the "cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. She seriously needs a Democracy Forward or ACLU lawyer, and some help from the British embassy with Rubio.

Looks like the wall works both ways now.

[Hekate]

26. The Berlin Wall went up when I was 13, so I actually remember it well. The Wall was designed to keep people IN...

They were shot & killed while attempting to leave over the Wall, or if they were caught in the act of tunneling they were imprisoned and tortured.

So, let’s just say that during his first term when trump was babbling on about his fantastic sea to sea wall to keep farmworkers out — I just kept thinking how that works both ways. Now he wants to have Americans who would like to go in to Canada to have their papers in hand and to have their photos taken. Land of the free my rosy Irish ass.

[ancianita]

27. Thank you. I, too, was 13 and remember. The lesson: Fascist dictators never build walls just

to keep bad people out of their country.
Unfortunately we were only 3 when Hannah Arendt wrote her classic, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which I'd not read until after I'd read corporate history. In all that time, though I'd studied humanities/philosophy and knew about fascism, I never imagined, nor would have believed if a crystal ball revealed the future, that our country could possibly do the same.
I knew OF oligarchs in the 70's, but have since learned that they've encouraged the well educated to "stay in the abstract," and so I'd only believed that totalitarianism was a sickness of other continents. I thought our leaders would always be rational.

And now? A convicted felon & his lawless henchmen, having flooded the zone with lies for years, pervert civil misdemeanors into major crimes.

It's part and parcel of the felon's racist theater for his hateful cult.
The root of their mutual secret depravity is that a) the cult themselves love to vote for an actual convicted criminal so that he will b) go after any and all "other" people who productively live and work and have families, constitutional rights and freedom, and then c) blackbag those "very bad people" off to death camps.
The felon's golf cart bumpersticker: "Immunity" for me; pardons for thee.

[malaise]

28. You think it's OK for someone with a visitor's visa

to remain in any country for 26 years without changing her/his status?
Remember how this went down.
Was the passport even valid? The Canadians said no - why?

[ancianita]

29. Okay. But does that carelessness merit criminalizing? Refusal of habeas corpus and due process?

Even Rubio knows the British Embassy knows US law.

[EllieBC]

30. When you know what the risks are

which you’d have to be under a rock not to, why would you be “careless?”

Not even the Canadians want to play these games. They’ve turned people away before for numerous reasons like expired passports or possibly lying about why they were seeking entry.

But now the stakes are higher. The Canadian border patrol turned you away before and you just walked away salty and whining. Now you get screwed on the other side when turned away.

So I think maybe being careless now is really just crazy.

[ancianita]

32. "When you know" assumes she knew. Did she? How do you know she did/didn't? Did you know that in 2022, there were

706,952 suspected in-country overstays in the U.S., representing a rate of 3.04% of expected departures?
That in 2023 in country overstays totaled 510,400 people?
Business and Tourist Visas: Roughly 400,000 individuals with short-term (tourism) visas issued in FY2023 remained beyond their allowed stay.

And that the average overstay in the last couple of years has been in the several hundred thousands?

You didn't know? Me, neither.

But even if we didn't know the numbers, most of us Americans who pay attention have known for at least a decade (this issue has been on FB since I first got on it in 2007) that the majority of "illegals" were really people who'd have flown into the U.S. and overstayed their visas. Driving, I myself have shown a passport at the Canadian border at least eight times (in four trips) and entering/exiting, told them I was traveling on vacation.

She knew that the stakes were higher and tried to actually leave, she didn't know Canadian law, and she should have gone to the nearest British consulate or embassy. But she was careless, stupid, and finally getting a clue about her situation, so "maybe crazy" ... or she was busy working, not unusual for an entertainer.

Bottom line, are you saying you're OK with Homeland's treatment of her? that her being in the wrong means ICE can criminalize her and then do what they want with her? Because if you mean to say she deserves what she gets, then that's exactly what you're saying.

[EllieBC]

36. I am not ok with ICE or Homeland doing that.

But this also shines a light on something that a lot of people know have called American exceptionalism. The belief that Americans have that laws don’t apply to them. Policies regarding immigration don’t apply to them. Trump might’ve threatened to make Canada the 51st state but plenty of Americans have been treating it as a 51st state their entire lives.

How many times do we have to hear up here Americans saying they’re just going to move here after an election. That’s not how it works. That’s not how anything works. Yet it’s always how Americans treat things like they have the right to go and do whatever they want to do anywhere they are and they don’t actually have to learn the laws of the country they are going to.

Learn the laws of where you are going.

Homeland security is a nightmare now. So don’t be stupid. Canada has for quite some time turned people away. So put that together and plan accordingly.

[ancianita]

37. Yes, you are. What this also shines a light on

is many folks' urge to blame the victim of Homeland, when she's only a victim of her own carelessness and stupidity over what are really racist laws, anyway. When the felon called all Republicans to vote down their bipartisan comprehensive immigration "it will make me look bad" bill, they proved that immigration wasn't the point at all.
We all know this. It's what the felon and his cult are all about. Maybe you and/or others forgot.

I'll just leave you with this briefing on immigration history that I posted almost a month ago before ICE's SHTF.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220388026

[malaise]

31. Entertainers and musicians access visas easier than

folks from most other categories.
Thousands of people with expired visitors’ and other visas are deported from countries across the globe daily.
No one would have looked for her if she didn’t head for Canada .with what I’m hearing was an expired British passport.
26 years and you don’t sort out your status. Sorry - This one is personal carelessness on steroids.

[ancianita]

33. Sure. If you think she deserves what she got, I don't know what to say. Everyone, including Musk and Melania, has a

'likely story' that they use to excuse overstaying visas.

The ONLY way all this could be solved is when corporations lobby -- as in buy off congress people -- to create unlimited H1B work visas instead of the current tight quota. They would then solve the employment problems for both them and American farmers who mostly run agribusinesses (and family farms on the side) anyway.
Why should corporations lobby for unlimited H1B work visas? Because corporations and our economy are global.

[malaise]

34. I agree with every word re resolving issues related to visas

but what about personnel responsibility.
We have close friends - their son and his wife broke up because the wife went to the US with their two children - all on visitors’ visas. She put the kids in school- well now that the shit has hit the fan he is in the US to get his children and bring them home before they are put in ICE packs or trafficked by the goons. Note those kids have no social security numbers - in a few years they can’t acquire drivers’ licenses etc. , or have access to college but in the meantime the government can pick them up and send them anywhere or the goons can traffic them

The mother is no criminal either other than committing crimes against her own kids. For what?
With or without these assholes, there are immigration laws

[ancianita]

35. I hear you.

But personal responsibility is assumed, and personal irresponsibility needn't be, nor must be, criminalized under immigration laws.

I don't know what else to say (-- since I reviewed the history of immigration in this country a while back about our undocumented immigrant framers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution --) except to say that I believe immigration laws have always been another front for racism. Racism has always been the heart and operating core of the Republican Party.
Name one Republican who is not a racist. Oh right. Reagan & McCain. Both dead.

I'll leave you with this.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220388026

[malaise]

43. That was an excellent post

Thanks for the link

[Initech]

6. Tom Homan and Kevin Roberts need a one way ticket to Mars on a Space X rocket now!

[SheltieLover]

17. Pls save a seat for president miller?

[Initech]

18. There's a seperate flight resereved for Trump and his cronies!

[SheltieLover]

19. Perfect!

Ty!

Let's hope fleaon's fuck ups designed it...another unscheduled disassembly. 🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

[Initech]

20. Well, given Space X's track record, you have a 50/50 chance of surviving!

[SheltieLover]

23. Oh no! Are the odds of survival that high?

[Initech]

24. Maybe more like 60/40!

(with 40 being the odds of surviving)

[SheltieLover]

25. Let's go with 90/10

[serbbral]

8. I don' t have much to add

I hope things work out for Ms. Eugene, and like someone said, she was leaving. Jeeze! Sorry to see this happen, but not surprised. Loose Ends was one of my all-time favorite groups back in the '80s and '90s. Great music. 'Hanging on a String' was one of my favorites.

[maxsolomon]

9. "Legendary" needs to be someone I've heard of.

Really strange story - when I go to Canada, I encounter no US Customs Agents. It's Canadians you talk to.

Did the Canadians turn her around for some reason?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. Canada refused her entry and then she was arrested by CBP.

[maxsolomon]

11. There you go.

Thanks for that info, I'm not watching a friggin video in GD. Canada won't let anyone with any convictions in.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

13. There's been no info on why she was denied entry. But she had overstayed her visa in the U.S., which was the basis for

arrest here.

The video was just a music video.

[maxsolomon]

14. Canada won't comment on why they turn people away,

but there could be 3 reasons:
1. She's got a conviction for something in the US, even as "minor" as DWI, and she fessed up.
2. She was going there to perform and didn't have permissions.
3. Massively expired British Passport - they don't last 26 years.

[DFW]

39. If it's number three, no wonder

Anyone who has a passport, and thinks it’s valid sixteen years after the expiration date is not living in the real world.

[Demovictory9]

41. She'd have to return to UK to renew the passport and risk not being admitted back into US

I wonder if she was able to travel as an RB singer

[DFW]

42. I don't know the rules for the UK and their foreign office.

In emergency situations the State Department can issue a temporary passport on location, but its intent is usually to get the citizen in distress back home.

During Covid, I was in the States in early August looking at a passport about to expire in January. Even DC said it would take 18 months for a renewal to go through. State said the best I could do was to get an appointment at the US consulate in Frankfurt and get a temporary passport there. It was good for a year in which time I was expected to get back to the USA, and the waiting time should have gone down drastically. I said, OK, better than nothing.

So, the moment I got back to Germany, I called the Consulate, asked to speak to Consular, and asked what I should bring with me. They told me, and I did. When I got there, I told the embassy guy I needed a one year temp. He looked at my passport and said, "Why don't you just do a normal renewal, which is good for ten years?" I said that Washington said I couldn't. He said that well, Frankfurt says you can. I told him I liked what Frankfurt said better.

He changed a few details on the application, said it would take about four weeks. Twelve days later, it was in a FedEx envelope at my house in Düsseldorf, having been issued in Washington, and I had not paid for expedited service. I couldn't believe it. I thought they must have invited a guest efficiency team from Switzerland or something.

[JI7]

15. Is she not a Canadian Citizen ? They won't let their own

citizens in either ?

[maxsolomon]

16. British.

She may have been using an expired passport?

[EllieBC]

22. British. That's not the same thing.

Being a British citizen doesn’t give you Canadian citizenship anymore than Canadian citizenship gives you Australian. Canada won’t let in people with expired passports. Or people who they suspect are there to work without a permit.

[DFW]

40. This is one of the reasons we made sure from birth that our children were dual nationals.

We could not foresee their lives’ paths when they were born, but getting eligible children dual nationality at birth is a lot easier than applying for it later on.

It’s their responsibility now to get both their German and their American passports renewed on a timely basis, which they both do. One lives and works in New York City, and the other lives and works in Germany. Their children—two each—are now also both US and German citizens. It was more of a paperwork battle nowadays than it was in the 1980s to get the dual citizenship done—two hours then, ten months now (there’s progress for you). But it still can be done, and we are SO glad we did it.

[Torchlight]

44. This'll make the U.S. more secure. nt