Prince Harry’s visa documents released without providing incriminating information
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
United States visa documents of Princy Harry, the Duke of Sussex, have been released by a court order and nothing has been found so far to warrant his deportation back to the United Kingdom as sought by Right-wing agitators.
Harry, whose major plank of “crime” against racists is his marriage to Meghan Markle, a bi-racial American who identifies as Black, had for years – long before he met Meghan – voiced his dislike for the stifling protocols of the British royal family.
His desire to flee the palace for a normal life did not get wings until he married Meghan in 2018, through whom he said he has discovered more about humanity. And through whom, he found a way to escape to freedom in 2020.
The British press has lobbed greater fury against the couple since they opted out of being “working royals” to pursue independent existence in the US, where the antagonism has also infected White racists, whose motive, like that of their British cousins across the pond, is to paint them bad and ridicule them at every turn.
Daily Express (UK) reports that the heavily redacted court documents were released on Tuesday after Judge Carl Nichols previously ruled that some of the documents should be made public.
The redacted court documents read: “Plaintiffs allege that the records should be disclosed as public confidence in the government would suffer or to establish whether the Duke was granted preferential treatment.
“This speculation by Plaintiffs does not point to any evidence of government misconduct.
“The records, as explained above, do not support such an allegation but show the regulatory process involved in reviewing and granting immigration benefits, which was done in compliance with the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1103 and applicable rules and regulation.”
The Heritage Foundation sued to lay hands on the visa documents because in his bombshell memoir Spare, Harry – who quit royal life in 2020 and moved to America – admitted to previous drug taking in his younger years.
This led to questions over how he was able to obtain a US visa, with previous drug use often being a reason for visas being declined.
The think tank group suggested the prince may have either lied about using drugs on his visa application or been given special treatment by the previous White House administration under President Joe Biden.
As reported by The Times, Harry’s team have maintained he was “truthful” in his visa application.
Since 2020, Harry has been living in Montecito with his wife Meghan Markle, 43, and their two children Prince Archie, five, and Princess Lilibet, three.
Concerns about the prince’s US visa and its future have been heightened over the last few months after Donald Trump became US President for the second time.
Trump has made it clear that he dislikes both Harry and Meghan after they quit the Royal Family in 2020, with the president believing they upset the late Queen Elizabeth II, who he was fond of.
Trump once said he would not protect Harry in his visa woes as a result of this. He told Daily Express US before being elected for the second time: “I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed the Queen. That’s unforgivable. He would be on his own if it was down to me.”
However, earlier this year Trump then said he did not want to get involved in the visa situation. He told the New York Post: “I’ll leave him alone. He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.”
Released court filings shed no fresh light on Harry’s visa documents
AP writes that the heavily redacted court filings released shed no fresh light on the circumstances under which Harry entered the US, the latest development in a legal fight by a conservative group that is pushing to find out whether he lied about past drug use on his immigration forms.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials responded to a request from U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols by saying the records were being “withheld in full” and that all records are deemed “categorically exempt from disclosure.”
The case has centered on the circumstances under which Harry — the Duke of Sussex and the son of King Charles III — entered the U.S. when he and his wife Meghan Markle moved to Southern California in 2020.
The Heritage Foundation sued after DHS largely rejected its Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request to release Harry’s records. Harry is not a party in the lawsuit.
Heritage has argued there is “intense public interest” in knowing whether Harry received special treatment during the application process, particularly after his 2023 memoir “Spare” revealed past drug use.
Harry has not consented to having his records made public, said Shari Suzuki, an official handling Freedom of Information Act requests for DHS and Customs and Border Protection.
“To release (Harry’s) exact status could subject him to reasonably foreseeable harm in the form of harassment as well as unwanted contact by the media and others,” another official, DHS chief FOIA officer Jarrod Panter, wrote.
Panter wrote that the Heritage Foundation bears “the burden of establishing that the public interest in disclosure outweighs an individual’s personal privacy interests in their information and that a significant public benefit would result from the disclosure of the individual’s records.”
Panter’s statement to the court includes multiple pages that are entirely blacked out.
Harry wrote in “Spare” that he took cocaine several times starting around age 17. He also acknowledged using cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms.
“It wasn’t very fun, and it didn’t make me feel especially happy as seemed to happen to others, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective. To feel. To be different,” he wrote.
The U.S. routinely asks about drug use on its visa applications, a query that has been linked to travel headaches for celebrities, including chef Nigella Lawson, singer Amy Winehouse and model Kate Moss.
Acknowledgment of past drug use doesn’t necessarily bar people from entering or staying in the country, but answering untruthfully can have serious consequences.
In a February hearing on the issue, Judge Nichols said he was seeking to strike a balance between revealing too much information in the DHS statements and redacting them to the point of meaninglessness.
“There’s a point where redactions would leave just a name or a date,” he said.
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