Valerie Hauch reports:
Ellen Richardson went to Pearson airport on Monday full of joy about flying to New York City and from there going on a 10-day Caribbean cruise for which she’d paid about $6,000.
But a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent with the Department of Homeland Security killed that dream when he denied her entry.
“I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression,’’ said Richardson, who is a paraplegic and set up her cruise in collaboration with a March of Dimes group of about 12 others.
Read more on The Toronto Star.
How did the U.S. get her mental health history? Apart from the fact that any policy denying entry to people with past history of suicidality may be overly broad, discriminatory, and just plain foolish, HOW DID THEY GET HER DETAILS?
People are routinely denied entry into the US because of public records, i.e. police reports associated with suicide attempts.
Certainly the US and Canada share such things.
There was no police involvement in her 2012 hospitalization, so what public record are you referring to?
According to the first article posted here, there was police involvement in her 2006 suicide attempt. Paragraph two:
The 64 year-old Toronto woman was fingerprinted and photographed. She questioned the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer about how he accessed her medical records. He said he didn’t. Instead, he knew police had attended her Toronto home in 2006 because she had done “violence to self.”
The two articles posted have conflicting details.
Never mind… my mistake… the articles link to two different people. The first article is not about Richardson at all.