By Editor-June 7th, 2023.
A federal judge has given the Department of Homeland Security until next Tuesday to decide how it will handle a conservative think tank’s request for Prince Harry’s US immigration records. So far the Department’s position is that there is nothing to respond to and that such information is private and not available to the public.
The Heritage Foundation has asked the US government via the Freedom of Information Act to see his visa application, citing his admission of past recreational drug use in his memoir. The group is questioning whether immigration officials properly granted Prince Harry’s application, since admission of past drug use can be grounds to reject a visa application.
A request for the form under the Freedom of Information Act was previously turned down by US Customs and Border Protection, which told the foundation that it would need Prince Harry’s consent in order to do so.
The think-tank insists the application is of “immense public interest” in light of the duke’s subsequent confessions of past illegal drug use as a teenager and as an adult, which he made in the Netflix series Harry & Meghan in his recent memoir Spare.
Prince Harry, 38, has publicly admitted to illegally using cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms.
The duke wrote in Spare that he had taken cocaine but found it “wasn’t much fun, and it didn’t make me particularly happy, as it seemed to make everyone around me” and said of smoking cannabis while still a pupil at Eton, the prestigious Berkshire private school: “Marijuana is different, that actually really did help me.”
A US DS160 visa application form explicitly asks the applicant to answer truthfully to the questions “Have you ever been a drug abuser or addict?” and “Have you ever violated, or engaged in a conspiracy to violate, any law relating to controlled substances?”
If the duke’s application were to be published and reveal that his answers contradicted his later public revelations about his dalliances with drugs, the case would call into question the Biden administration’s handling of the visa application process, the organisation contends.
In a statement, the Heritage Foundation said that it hopes to determine whether “celebrity elites” such as the Duke of Sussex were likely to receive preferential treatment and whether the DHS was operating “fairly – without fear or favour”.
Speaking to Sky News, its counsel Sam Dewey said: “The [US] government has taken the position that ‘there’s nothing to see here’.
“We’ve taken the position that no, if you look through all the details of his admissions, you look at the drug laws, you look at the laws on admissions, there’s a real serious question as to whether or not he should have been admitted.
“The alternative, if he didn’t disclose the drug use – then there’s a very serious question as to whether or not proceedings should have begun against him for that.”
Responding, the DHS said the think-tank had failed to demonstrate the necessity of releasing the document and questioned whether there was truly “widespread” public interest in the matter.
Prince Harry’s spokespeople have so far said they will not comment “at this time”.
The case is set to be heard in federal court in Washington DC and to take several weeks, although legal experts have predicted that the presiding judge is unlikely to side with the foundation’s argument because immigration documents contain a wealth of personal information about the applicant and so ordering the release of Prince Harry’s would set a potentially dangerous precedent.
Stacy Cozart Martin, an immigration lawyer and professor at Case Western Reserve University, told the BBC: “Those applications have a ton of personal information on them. It would be very, very shocking, and I think a little frightening, if that were to be released to the public. Not only for him, but as a whole.”
Sources: MSN News, CNN, BBC.
