Welcome to the US

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Welcome to the US

Postby KEND on Mon Oct 16, 2017 10:10 am

Fake news? judge for yourself

Laurie Bridges, Corvallis
October 11, 2017
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Cristina Alonso, a 22-year-old college student from Spain, planned to visit Oregon for six weeks this summer. Instead, border agents sent her to NORCOR jail in the The Dalles for over 48 hours. Her friend, Professor Laurie Bridges, shares the shocking story.
On Wednesday, July 5, I arrived at the airport in Portland to pick up a family friend, 22-year-old Cristina Alonso. Cristina had purchased a roundtrip ticket, from Madrid to Portland and would be staying with my family in Corvallis for exactly six weeks.
A mutual friend in Spain had connected us six months prior. Cristina was interested in coming to the U.S. to have a “cultural experience,” as she put it. We have hosted other students in the past and we thought it would be a great experience for all of us, so we came up with a plan for her to visit us for the summer. Cristina wanted to work on her English, and my son needed help with his Spanish, so we offered to give her $100 per week to help make the trip work on her budget. We also made plans to go on trips to Bend and Seattle so she could see a little more of the country.
Although she was excited, she was also very nervous about visiting the United States. It was her first time traveling outside of the European Union and the news about President Trump had raised concerns about traveling here. To help ease her fears, I wrote up a short letter that I scanned and emailed to her, though I never imagined she would have any trouble. The letter stated simply that Cristina would be visiting us in Corvallis for six weeks, she was a friend of the family, she would help my son with his Spanish and we would help her with her English, and we would go on trips to Bend, Oregon and Seattle, so that she could see more of the country. I also included my phone number in the letter.
While I waited for Cristina at the airport, she messaged me to say she had landed and she also sent a photo of the long line at Customs. An hour and a half later, I got a call from a man who said he was a border agent. He told me that he was with Cristina and that she had the wrong visa. He told me that he understood she was visiting us, mostly to help my son with his Spanish, but the $100 per week allowance we had planned on giving her meant she should have a different visa. He told me he would see what he could do and that he would call me back. The phone call lasted no more than two minutes. He never called back and Cristina stopped answering messages.
In a panic, I called the number back several times, but there was no answer and a message said the mailbox was full. I frantically messaged back and forth with her parents and my friend to help translate. Disturbingly, we could see that someone was opening and viewing the messages we sent to Cristina, but there was no response.
I called the main airport information line, asking where Cristina might be, and they said that Customs doesn’t share information with them. I found online that the Customs office was one mile away. I got in my car and drove over there, but it was closed for the night.
I desperately called many phone numbers and sent various messages, including to the ACLU and the Spanish consulate in San Francisco. But it was late and everything was closed. At about midnight, I didn’t know what else to do, so I went to a hotel near the airport to wait until the Customs office opened in the morning.
I had a restless night wondering what could have happened to my friend. First thing in the morning, I started back up with phone calls. Someone finally answered the number that the border agent had called me from. I told him my story, and asked where Cristina was.
“I have no idea,” he quipped.
“How can I find out where she is?”
The agent told me I needed to talk to administration, but they weren’t in yet. I decided to drive back to the customs office, to try to speak with someone in person. I arrived just as they opened.
omeone there finally told me that Cristina had been denied entry into the country, and had been taken to a “holding facility” to await a return flight the next day in the evening. They wouldn’t tell me where the facility was, but they told me that Cristina had access to a phone and could call if she wanted to.
After more calls and more dead ends, I dejectedly returned to my home in Corvallis. From there, I started reaching out to more people, including someone who said I should call the ACLU of Oregon immigration hotline. Minutes after I called, I received a reply telling me that Cristina was being held in jail at the Northern Oregon Regional Correction Facility (NORCOR) in The Dalles. I couldn’t believe that the “holding facility” was actually a jail. It was worse than I imagined.
I called the jail immediately. They asked if I was a lawyer and I said I was a friend and the only person Cristina knew in the United States.
“We don’t just let friends call up prisoners!”
The jail staffer told me that I’d need to create an online account in order to send a message to Cristina. I got an account, deposited money and sent a message saying, “I finally found you!” It had been approximately 20 hours since her parents or I had been in contact with Cristina.
In all, Cristina was held for 48 hours with the jail population, though she had committed no crime. She was treated poorly, and denied medical treatment when she requested it. She had no money in her jail phone account and no access to her belongings, so could not call out to family members. Once I found out about the phone account, it took $130 to send messages and make phone calls over the next 24 hours.
Cristina was taken from NORCOR back to Portland International Airport the next day where she was able to board a plane and exit the nightmare that the United States had been for her.
Even if she had the wrong visa, was sending a 22-year-old college student to jail the only option? They could have released her to me for two days, to be returned to the airport for her return flight. They could have explained the situation to me or her family. They could have provided her with one free phone call. But they did not. If I had not gotten ahold of the ACLU of Oregon, who finally told me where Cristina was being held, nobody would have heard from her for at least 48 hours.
I would have never believed that this could happen in the United States, let alone in Oregon. But I have learned that ICE operates in isolation and ignores the human rights that I have come to expect as an American. I encourage every Oregonian to protest the expansion of the ICE detentions at NORCOR in The Dalles. I also tell everyone to avoid entering on international flights through Portland International airport, even though it is supposed to be our gateway to the world.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Bill on Mon Oct 16, 2017 11:05 am

Sounds like an awful situation. You'd think that there would be a kinder, gentler way of handling this sort of thing.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby wiesiek on Tue Oct 17, 2017 1:22 am

Getting legal US visa from US embassy officer doesn`t mean , that you easy may cross the heavens gate.
You may be stopped on the border, and sending back if your conversation with emigration officer wasn`t satisfied his officer highest ass.
so,
if you`re not US citizen or from no visas country, you entry depends directly from border emigrations officer humor.
and
of course answer was deadly wrong - 6 weeks!
Cry for throwin` out in officers text book,
should be 8 weeks, dammed!
it was like it 25 y.a.
It could be only worst, I think.
that`s all

BTW,
I have feeling, that it is "made up" message, however if it isn`t fake news... -argh- -dropjaw- -woot-
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Michael on Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:05 pm

Professor Bridges has hosted students before, but knows nothing about the basics of immigration law, visas, etc. I also knew very little before I moved abroad, but if I were hosting foreigners I would investigate more and know that you can't tell the immigration officer you're being paid to be a Spanish tutor on a tourist visa. Bridges naiveté continues with her suggestion that ICE should allow the student to hang with her for a couple of days; that's not how it works.

In China, people get put in jail regularly because of flight delays, sometimes for days. Life Pro Tip: avoid plane transfers in Communist countries. Then again, if you've ever over stayed a visa in the USA and changed planes there later on an international flight, something similar will happen. For example, if you're from a Latin American country and over stayed your USA tourist visa several years ago, then were on a flight to Europe and changed planes in an "international port" in Miami, you will get pulled off your flight, interrogated, and returned to origin country.

People who don't come to the USA on visas don't have the Spanish student's problem. USA border security is actually tight in the places where it's enforced. Canada's even stricter. You might prefer a couple of days in jail to having Canuck border guards interrogate you and then dismantle your vehicle for drill.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby windwalker on Tue Oct 17, 2017 7:56 pm

Michael wrote:
In China, people get put in jail regularly because of flight delays, sometimes for days. Life Pro Tip: avoid plane transfers in Communist countries. Then again, if you've ever over stayed a visa in the USA and changed planes there later on an international flight, something similar will happen. For example, if you're from a Latin American country and over stayed your USA tourist visa several years ago, then were on a flight to Europe and changed planes in an "international port" in Miami, you will get pulled off your flight, interrogated, and returned to origin country.

People who don't come to the USA on visas don't have the Spanish student's problem. USA border security is actually tight in the places where it's enforced. Canada's even stricter. You might prefer a couple of days in jail to having Canuck border guards interrogate you and then dismantle your vehicle for drill.


;) yep had a run in, in chin china for some paper work that some one let me sign trying to help me stay longer. Almost did, in jail. :o

Green card holders who over stay 6 months outside the US are subject to losing their green card...Also had this happen to my ex, coming back from Korea....They would not allow her to board the plane but allowed our daughters US citizens to. lots of problems that time.... :P

pays to know what the law is, and what happens if one either does not know or does not follow it....
lessons learned. :-\

now a legal resident of Taiwan, life is good ;)
Last edited by windwalker on Tue Oct 17, 2017 8:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Trick on Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:08 pm

Michael wrote:In China, people get put in jail regularly because of flight delays, sometimes for days.
.

Make sure to get inside the check-in area, I guess that area is better than Jail-area
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Michael on Wed Oct 18, 2017 12:20 am

If your flight gets delayed and you can't check in your luggage before midnight, you have to either leave it behind and go to check-in area without it, abandon your luggage and go to check-in before midnight, stay after midnight with your luggage and pay a fine, or go to jail. The worst one is some flight that only goes once a week to somewhere in SE Asia and people have to change planes in Urumqi, but sometimes the connecting flight is canceled so they have to spend a week in jail waiting for the next flight.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Ian C. Kuzushi on Wed Oct 18, 2017 4:42 am

So what's the argument here? That we should treat foreign visitors with sponsors and visas as China does? Gee, I love how some seem to lambast China when it fits their agenda, but it's simply "how things work" when there is a university professor involved.

I wonder what the response would have been from you slimeballs if Obama was still president; or if Milo was arrested and thrown in jail.

People should not be put in jail even if they misspeak or don't understand what they can and can't do with their visa.

I'm sure the Spanish last name gave the new hires a hard on and they thought they had found someone Trump would back their play on. At the worst, the student should have been kept in the terminal and sent home. Sounds more like they should have been talked to about what they can and can't do on whatever visa they had and let in.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby windwalker on Wed Oct 18, 2017 4:54 am

Ian C. Kuzushi wrote:People should not be put in jail even if they misspeak or don't understand what they can and can't do with their visa. .


Try posting with out the BS coming from your own mind.

What should be done if what a person says violates the visa conditions they arrived with when asked a question?
Of those I know coming from China or Taiwan they are very careful about what they say, and understand the rules.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby wiesiek on Wed Oct 18, 2017 5:08 am

:)
, yup, Wind,
students from China - they are well versed in slaloming between official stupid paragraphs ,
same like me -peps from former communists part of the world.
You have to learn how to outsmart /?/ governments official questioning,
if not, your life became nightmare...
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Steve James on Wed Oct 18, 2017 5:41 am

Well, people make visa and passport mistakes all the time. How they are treated can be very different. The implication of the article is that the woman from Spain's treatment was especially harsh. All it would take was one tsa or customs agent to make it a nightmare. Otoh, her English isn't that good either.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Ian C. Kuzushi on Wed Oct 18, 2017 6:22 am

Otoh, her English isn't that good either.


That applies to a lot of people on this message board, but I hardly think it's a reason to throw someone into the gen pop at a jail.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Michael on Wed Oct 18, 2017 7:04 am

You're a real laugh, Kuzushi. Slimeball, Milo, Obama? Oh, my! Way to stay on topic.

I don't think it's clear whether she was put in gen pop or if, because this is such a regular place for ICE to put people that the ACLU knows about it, that they have an area for deportees outside of gen pop.

If not in jail, where exactly should a deportee be kept in this situation?

If you are concerned about jail and prison conditions for deportees in America, are you also concerned about those conditions for others confined there? Considering the widespread problems in American prisons and jails, why should this student's 48 hours deserve so much of your sympathy that you condemn others for not expressing concern exactly as you deem appropriate, especially without really knowing what their concerns may be?
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Steve James on Wed Oct 18, 2017 7:25 am

I didn't condemn or excuse anyone. I suggested that either side could be in error or it was a mix up. It could be that she was treated that way because she had a Spanish name. But, I didn't say that or suggest that the customs agents were bigots.

Never mentioned Milo either. You're confused. [Oops, my bad. You weren't talking to me.]
Last edited by Steve James on Wed Oct 18, 2017 7:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Welcome to the US

Postby Michael on Wed Oct 18, 2017 7:54 am

Haha, no worries, Steve.
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