For roughly 100 days, Thomas says he faced harsh detention conditions, despite agreeing to deportation
Thomas, a 35-year-old tech worker and father of three from Ireland, came to West Virginia to visit his girlfriend last fall. It was one of many trips he had taken to the US, and he was authorized to travel under a visa waiver program that allows tourists to stay in the country for 90 days.
He had planned to return to Ireland in December, but was briefly unable to fly due to a health issue, his medical records show. He was only three days overdue to leave the US when an encounter with police landed him in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody.
From there, what should have been a minor incident became a nightmarish ordeal: he was detained by Ice in three different facilities, ultimately spending roughly 100 days behind bars with little understanding of why he was being held – or when he’d get out.
If the government is so incompetent that it detains someone for months because they overstayed their visa for 3 days , do you trust them to handle anything else correctly?
It should be pretty easy to detain someone, say, hey you didn’t leave on time and get them on a flight out. This doesn’t take months, especially if there’s some actual circumstances like this guy apparently had.
This type of behavior is going to stop international companies from doing any in person business with US companies. It’s disgusting.