Make Prince Harry’s visa application public, campaigners demand amid ‘drug-use’ lawsuit
An ambassador for Joe Biden said he’d never deport Prince Harry amid a review of his visa
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Your support makes all the difference.Campaigners are demanding Prince Harry’s US visa application be made public after Joe Biden’s advisor asserted that the current president would under no circumstances deport the prince.
The comments were made by ambassador Jane Hartley in response to former president, Donald Trump, who said that if reelected he would treat Harry like any other citizen should it emerge that he has broken the law.
Prince Harry’s visa application is currently being reviewed in private after the Duke of Sussex admitted to doing drugs in his 2023 memoir, Spare.
This was picked up on by various readers, who noted that in order to apply for a US visa, a person must answer questions about their prior drug use.
The think tank group The Heritage Foundation subsequently launched a lawsuit to ascertain whether or not Harry lied on his application.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refused to make the documents public when they were first requested last June, stating that there was no “public interest in disclosure sufficient to override the subject’s privacy interests”.
The Heritage Foundation, however, now believes that disclosure is now very much in the public interest.
“Ambassador Hartley’s statements dramatically enhance the already compelling public interest in disclosure,” they said, describing the claim as “extraordinary”.
The think tank group claims that the DHS said “none of the information that we have can be released without acknowledging what Prince Harry’s immigration status is or tipping our hand as to what it is.”
Nile Gardiner, Director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, said: “The US Ambassador to London’s arrogant remarks on Prince Harry are an extraordinary intervention by a senior US diplomat on an ongoing federal court case.
“The US Ambassador’s remarks clearly spoke directly not only to the Duke of Sussex’s current immigration status, but to Prince Harry’s future immigration status as well.
“The Biden Administration has gone to great lengths to protect Prince Harry, and has even ruled out the possible deportation of the Duke of Sussex if he lied on his U.S. immigration application and violated US immigration law.
“The Biden Administration has acted without transparency and accountability to the American people regarding the Heritage Foundation’s Freedom of Information request relating to Prince Harry’s US immigration application. They should release Harry’s immigration records to the American people.”
The duke, 39, recounted using various substances during his tumultuous youth in the book - citing one example of drug use as recently as 2016.
He wrote: “Psychedelics did me some good as well. I’d experimented with them over the years, for fun, but now I’d begun to use them therapeutically, medicinally. They didn’t simply allow me to escape reality for a while.
“They let me redefine reality. Under the influence of these substances, I was able to let go of rigid preconcepts, to see that there was another world beyond my heavily filtered senses, a world that was equally real and doubly beautiful - a world with no red mist.”
The Independent has approached reprsentatives for Prince Harry for comment.
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