
Incoming Harvard Freshman Deported After Visa Revoked - onemoresoop
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/8/27/incoming-freshman-deported/
======
mabbo
> “After the 5 hours ended, she called me into a room, and she started
> screaming at me. She said that she found people posting political points of
> view that oppose the US on my friend[s] list.”

> “I responded that I have no business with such posts and that I didn't like,
> [s]hare or comment on them and told her that I shouldn't be held responsible
> for what others post,” he wrote. “I have no single post on my timeline
> discussing politics.”

> The officer then canceled Ajjawi’s visa, informed him he would be deported,
> and allowed him a phone call to his parents.

I guess there's a new tip if you plan to travel to the US: delete all social
media for at least a few months, or else fill it with fake accounts praising
the United States.

Huh. Now there's a fun business idea. For $k, we make you a new social media
account that clones your existing ones (including friends), but removes all
posts by your friends that machine learning determines are anti-American, and
adds new posts that praises America.

~~~
_pmf_
That's a case of an official abusing her power; not something that changing
immigration laws will prevent.

~~~
2_listerine_pls
So a set of laws creating a separate body to review and punish these abuses
wouldn't change anything?

~~~
_pmf_
Disallowing "outsourcing" such tasks to private contractors would be something
I'm definitely in favor of.

A fast track for appeals in cases of suspected power abuse would probably also
be worthy of consideration.

------
davidwitt415
Given that Tyre is in the South of Lebanon, it is likely that his friends were
making anti-Israel posts. It would be very interesting to see what the posts
were, if they were really subversive or just promoting BDS - Boycott, Divest,
Sanction.

Given that Ajjawi identified as Palestinian, this is more likely, and it would
be a legitimate grievance considering that Israel has illegally expropriated
much of Palestine.

------
onetimemanytime
USCIS discussion:

Agent A. This guy is a terrorist. Look at that crap he's part of it.

Agent B: Yeah but I don't see his name anywhere.

Agent : Well, he might have scrubbed his posting first.

BOTTOM LINE: your visa depends on the agents at the gate.

------
hourislate
Without knowing the details and just going by what was said in the article,
it's impossible to make a decision whether it was right or wrong to bar him
from entering the USA.

If this student was keeping company with people who openly supported ISIS or
wanted to hurt Americans, would it still be ok to let him attend Harvard even
though he never made any Social Media posts about politics?

~~~
hrktb
It should have been dealt at a different level.

His student visa should have been accepted anyway, and open an investigation
on him as a US resident if you think he could be a terrorist threat. He passed
several layers of heavy screening already, it shouldn’t all be canceled on a
single agent’s presumption based on social media posts.

~~~
mjamil
It’s worse than you think.

1\. One’s standing on a temporary visa (whether a B-visa as a tourist or an
F/J-visa as a student) is always subject to such arbitrary fates by both DHS
and DoS personnel. This includes the arbitrary and - more painfully, non-
appealable and non-reviewable control a single CBP (part of DHS) officer on
whether you get to enter the US each time you attempt to do so. That’s the
problem this kid ran into. But it starts even earlier: visas are denied in a
similarly non-reviewable and non-appealable way by a single FS (part of DoS)
consular officer. A staggering percentage of those [1] are denied in the
above-mentioned categories. There’s plenty of folks here on HN that can tell
you this has happened to them or to someone they know and could vouch for
personally.

[1] [https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-
Im...](https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-
Statistics/NIVWorkload/FY2018NIVWorkloadbyVisaCategory.pdf)

2\. A US permanent resident (informally known as a green card holder) is
subject to the same scrutiny by CBP at each entry as someone on a temporary
visa. So you can still get deported on your 100th return to the US after 30
years of living here. But you do have legal recourse to have such a decision
of inadmissibility reviewed by an immigration court. Great, you might think.
But your chances of winning anything in immigration court are largely
determined by who you draw as an ICE (part of DHS) prosecutor and an
immigration (judges are under EOIR, part of DoJ) judge. The prosecutor has the
(limited) ability to decide to fight such an appeal. (This is how Dreamers,
for example, aren’t all being deported: they are low-priority ICE prosecution
targets, even now under Trump. DACA, under Obama, was a liberal presidential
whim: it was an executive order telling ICE prosecutors to indefinitely
postpone Dreamer prosecutions.) And how liberally an immigration judge
interprets ruling law is very geographically correlated [2].

[2] [https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-
immi...](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-
asylum/)
[https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/depo...](https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/court_backlog/deport_outcome_charge.php)

3\. The judge isn’t the only arbitrary actor under DoJ. EOIR has no
independence from the executive branch, so immigration court judges are
subject to a president’s policy whims. Judges’ decisions are reviewed by an
appellate body (BIA) but that’s also part of EOIR and thus DoJ. And the AG
(head of DoJ) can arbitrarily take any pending immigration decision out of the
hands of an immigration judge or BIA panel and then decide it on their own.
(Former Trump AG Sessions accelerated the usage of this.) Current Trump AG
Barr has recently delegated this power down to the head of EOIR, thus adding
yet another individual with the power to make arbitrary decisions [3].

[3]
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/20...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/23/william-
barr-ag-announces-changes-immigration-cour/)

4\. Both AILA (the association of immigration attorneys) and NAIJ (the judges
union) wants to end the arbitrariness and establish a pattern of decision
making based on legal jurisprudence and precedent. They want to accomplish
this by moving EOIR under the judicial branch instead of the executive. AG
Barr’s response has been to attempt to decertify the union [4].

[4] [https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750656176/trump-
administratio...](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/12/750656176/trump-
administration-seeks-decertification-of-immigration-judges-union)

------
tombert
At the risk of a massive surge of downvotes, in what universe is this ok?

If someone has managed to get into Harvard, isn't that someone that we _want_
in the US? It baffles me the level of cognitive dissonance that must be
happening in the brains of the people that support the Trump administration
and how much they have to repeat to themselves that this nationalistic moron
is somehow not a racist.

While I understand that HN doesn't like people engaging in political
discussions, I have to think that inaction from educated people is _not_ a
neutral position. Shouldn't hackers (and wannabe intellectuals like me) be the
force that is actively discussing these dangerous positions?

~~~
grecy
I personally believe this (and many cases like it) are just a symptom of the
systems we have created to live in.

Our laws and systems are so complex and convoluted that nobody can reasonably
keep track of, or apply them all in any logical or reasonable fashion. Rules
exist for the purpose of being enforced, and so someone has gone about
enforcing rules here. The fact there is more information is completely
irrelevant to the enforcement of one particular rule.

My family used to joke that we need the "Reasonable Police" who would be above
literally everything, and intelligent people could sit there and see if
something makes sense as a whole or not before a decision is made about
anything.

EDIT: Yes, of course I know the "Reasonable Police" is fraught with danger.
That's why we would joke about it.

~~~
sjg007
Nah this is just Trump's social media policy. Clearly it extends to friends
and perhaps friends of friends. It should be pressed in the courts and maybe
Congress should get involved. I mean we do recognize freedom of speech in this
country and freedom of association. Since this kid had a valid Visa so the
vetting should have been done and the bar to invalidate that visa should be
high. That being said, it seems wise for people to purge their social media
before visiting the US. It also seems wise not to have US social media
accounts.

~~~
wil421
CBP were checking social media accounts under Obama for sure. Not sure if they
did it for Visa applications under Obama or not but Trump made it a
requirement.

~~~
sjg007
Yes they did. I am not saying they didn't check social media before Trump. I
am saying that this is Trump's specific policy at play here. Also this guy
obtained a valid visa!

