A few weeks ago, we learned that an American judge had quietly “terminated” Heritage Foundation’s 18-month-long fishing expedition into Prince Harry’s visa records. After Spare was published, Heritage decided that Harry’s story about trying cocaine when he was a teenager was some kind of dealbreaker for Immigration. It was not and is not. What Heritage actually did was launch a high level campaign to harass Harry and barrage DHS with their asinine FOIA requests and British MAGA agenda. Well, now the judge’s ruling has been made public – with some redactions – and obviously, it’s all good news for Harry.
The Duke of Sussex’s US visa application should remain private despite him admitting taking drugs in his memoir, a judge has ruled. Harry’s reference to taking cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms in his book Spare prompted a conservative Washington, DC think tank to question why he was allowed into the US in 2020.
In his ruling seen in court documents on Monday, US judge Carl Nichols said “the public does not have a strong interest in disclosure of the duke’s immigration records”.
His judgment added: “Like any foreign national, the duke has a legitimate privacy interest in his immigration status. And the duke’s public statements about his travel and drug use did not disclose, and therefore did not eliminate his interest in keeping private, specific information regarding his immigration status, applications, or other materials.”
The Heritage Foundation brought the lawsuit against the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) after a Freedom of Information Act request was rejected, with the think tank claiming it was of “immense public interest”. Judge Nichols went on to say the public’s interest in disclosure of Harry’s immigration records is “outweighed by the duke’s privacy interest”.
He said: “Public disclosure of records about a single admission of a foreign national in the circumstances described above would provide the public, at best, limited information about the department’s general policy in admitting aliens. And the marginal public benefit of knowing that limited information is outweighed by the privacy interest the duke retains in his immigration status and records.”
Some of the judgment has been redacted – in particular facts the duke has not disclosed publicly in relation to his immigration status and records, and what was contained in his visa application.
The judge agreed with DHS’s lawyers completely. DHS argued that Harry’s immigration information is private personal information and there were zero records that Harry had ever been convicted of a drug-related offense. Which is spelled out in all of the Immigration laws/regulations too – simple admissions of drug use in one’s teenage years are not prohibitive, but drug-related convictions are. Heritage’s argument was always flawed – they treated Harry’s drug-use admissions as drug convictions, then they tried to fudge their fishing expedition by saying that Harry “lied” in his visa documents and that’s why the docs needed to be released. All of it was a waste of time, money and effort by vindictive right-wing British a–holes who work at Heritage. Their goal was multifold: they wanted to publicly harass Harry; they were doing Buckingham Palace’s bidding; they were creating content for British newspapers; and they were trying to make the Biden administration sound weak on immigration (even though Harry came to America when Trump was president).
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.