“If you have a current valid visa to travel, we welcome you. But unregulated, unvetted travel is not a universal privilege.” (US Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, March 6, 2017) Taking his words literally, Secretary Kelly got it half right. But fundamentally, he got it all wrong, in his statement today on the #MuslimBan 2.0 […]
Since the start of our work against restrictions on freedom to fly, well before September 11, 2001, we’ve been wondering what further outrage it would take to provoke mass protests at airports, and when that would finally happen. Now we know. Thousands of protesters (including at least one of President Trump’s fellow billionaires) filled international […]
At the invitation of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), we’ve submitted the following recommendations concerning the right to freedom of movement as it relates to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers at ports, airports, borders, and checkpoints: As an NGO primarily concerned with the right to freedom of movement, the […]
According to a recently-released European Commission staff working document, the U.S. Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) is not “tantamount to the … visa … process” required for admission to the European “Schengen Zone”, and therefore does not give cause for the imposition of reciprocal visa requirements for US citizens seeking to enter Schengen countries. […]
In the aftermath of the storming of the U.S. Capitol last week, there’s been a confused cacophony of calls to “put the rioters on the no-fly list.” At the same time, there have been equally confusing claims and denials that some people found out that they had already been “put on the no-fly list” when […]
An article by Saad Hasan for TRT World (the English-language news service of Turkey’s national public broadcasting network) highlights a life-and-death issue for refugees: Why are thousands of asylum seekers who could afford to buy a plane ticket to Europe or the USA dying every year trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea or the Sonoran […]
A redacted version of the report of an internal review by the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of DHS implementation of President Trump’s January 2017 “Muslim Ban” Executive Order has been made public several months after the report was prepared. Both the manner in which the OIG report was eventually released and the […]
Invoking memes that we’ve seen and warned about before under both Democratic and Republican administrations, President Trump has attributed the latest version 3.0 of his “Muslim ban”announced today (proclamation, FAQ, explainer) with the need to comply with ICAO and INTERPOL standards for passport issuance, “identity management”, and data sharing about travelers — as though US immigration […]
San Francisco and Silicon Valley are among the centers of opposition to President Trump and his fascism, especially as it relates to restrictions on movement, border controls, immigration, and asylum. Bay Area technology companies and their better-paid classes of employees like to think of themselves as building a better world that reflects the distinctive values […]
[D]ue process requires… notice and a hearing prior to restricting an individual’s ability to travel. (9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Order on Motion for Stay, February 9, 2017, State of Washington and State of Minnesota v. Trump) President Trump’s Executive Orders prohibiting entry to the US by citizens of specified blacklisted countries and cutting off […]