The article is very light on details, but implies all of these spouses travelled to the US on a visa waiver (or similar) and then applied for a green card. Entering the US on most visas includes the assertion that you have no intent to immigrate. If you happen to already be in the US when you fall in love, get married, and apply to stay, that's when you're allowed to overstay during your pending application.

As far as I can tell from the article, it appears all of these people committed immigration fraud by entering on non-immigrant visas with clear intent to immigrate. Given that they're almost certainly upstanding people who intended to do the right thing, I think they could safely be asked to leave and apply correctly without the forceful detention, but they are technically in the wrong. What they did is specifically something I knew not to do and went through great pains to avoid.

The immigration processes for legitimate foreign spouses are Kafkaesque and absolutely need to be overhauled. It shouldn't be easier to come in illegally than through legitimate marriage. But in the meantime, people also can't circumvent the existing laws and then act flabbergasted when called on it.

I really do feel terrible for these couples caught up in it, especially since it seems their lawyers misled them.

Ridiculous.

Say No to crime.

For example, one of the requirements for naturalization is "good moral chracter". Well, what does that mean? Up until this year, that's simply been the absence of any disqualifying criteria, such as unpaid taxes, unpaid child support, most felony convictions, etc. This administration has reinterpreted "good moral chracter" to be affirmative, something you need to provide proof of, rather than the absence of anything negative. This is arguably illegal.

Anyway, back to this article, one example here is from San Diego. This article doesn't mention it but there was a leaked memo where USCIS and ICE are trialling a new process in the San Diego field office of having the interviewing visa officer call in ICE to detain applicants in cases they never did before.

For context, overstaying a visa isn't a crime (unless you get deported then do it again, basically). It's a civil infraction. There are lots of immigration benefits you can't get if you're out of status however but marriage to a US citizen is an exception. Visa overstays and unauthorized work are generally forgiven in those cases, by law. So such people were never detained because their overstays were forgiven so what's the point?

There are also people who did not enter through a regular port of entry. Legally, this is called "entering without inspection". This includes people who sneak across the border. It also includes a bunch of people who were infants or children at the time so never made a choice. This was the basis for the DACA ("Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals") program under Obama. There are people who are now adults who have lived here since they were a few months old who have never known anywhere else. Deporting them to a country they've never known is cruel and unusual.

So another thing this administration has done has created a policy whereby all those who entered without inspection can be detained and should be denied bond.

Here's a partial list of other sins of the administration just off the top of my head:

1. Most visibly, the ICEstapo raids;

2. Skin color can now be used as a factor for an immigration stop thanks to an "emergency" ruling by this Supreme Court, granting a petition by the government. Location can be another factor so it's now completely legal to do an immigration stop on someone who looks Hispanic in the vicinity of a Home Depot, for example.

3. Ended TPS ("Temporary Protected Status") for a bunch of countries, putting refugees and asylum seekers out of status;

3. Immigration judges, unlike Federal judges, are not ARticle 3 judges (by the Constitution). ARticle 3 judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate and cannot be fired. They have to be impeached. Immigration judges are simply employees of the executive branch. This administration has started firing immigreation judges if they approve too many cases;

4. People such as Kilmer Abrego Garcia were deported to El Salvador, a country he feared returning to, in defiance of a Federal court order blocking his deportation to El Salvador. When taken there he was put in a maximum security prison (ie CECOT);

5. The government then for the longest time refused to fix their error, including openly defying Federal judges;

6. Revoking the lawful permanent residence status of Mahmoud Khalil for hurting Israel's feelings by saying factually accurate things about Israel's war crimes and organizing peaceful protests at Columbia;

7. Black bagging detainees and moving them interstate before their families know so a local judge can't block their detention and order them released. In fact, they take them to the jurisdictions of friendly judges in places like Louisiana. This is the ultimate in judge shopping;

8. For visa applicants outside the US, this administration has begun forcing people to go to the consulate in their home country rather than the country they live in. This puts in limbo people who come from countries with which the US currently has no consulate. This is an intentional delay tactic as a person may study or work in the UK but be a citizen of Ghana or Nigeria where there is a 2-4 year wait for a visa interview. This is intentional.

9. Arbitrarily decided that humanitarian parolees under Biden were "illegally" paroled into the US and are now seeking to detain and deport these people;

10. Deporting people to so-called third countries ie not to that person's country of origin or even a country they might otherwise choose under voluntary departure;

I'm sure there's more. It's a shame only the ICEstapo raids really get any media attention.

Well done. Peter Thiel is proud of you.

And did they violate the Visa? Don’t break the law.

However from a moral standpoint I find the infant child separation abhorrent and think that we should generally defer to American citizen spouses as a pretty good indicator that we should show some mercy in enforcement. Moreover, the law should be changed that foreign spouses without criminal records and not taking public benefit ought to be allowed to stay and work honestly. Make it easy.