While his ties to England seem to have been severed for the most part, the prodigal son of King Charles, Prince Harry, is now involved in a lawsuit aiming to release his US immigration files to the public—a move that could end up seeing him turned away from his new chosen home.
A US federal judge hinted yesterday (5) that he is ‘likely’ to order the release of Harry’s immigration documents.
These files are expected to reveal if the Duke of Sussex was lawfully issued a visa or if he could now be subject to deportation for lying to US authorities about his admitted past drug use.
US District Court Judge for the District of Columbia Carl J. Nichols decided this during a hearing for a case brought by lawyers at the Heritage Foundation.
The conservative group is suing the Department of Homeland Security to compel the release of Harry’s records.
The New York Post reported:
“’To the maximum extent possible, I’m required to make public everything that can be made public’, Nichols told both parties, adding that he had to take care any disclosures do not violate US privacy laws shielding the Duke.
‘I’m going to take this in stages’, Nichols added at the end of the hearing, indicating that he would allow the government to ‘submit proposed redactions’ in order for him to ‘analyze’ whether Harry properly attested to cocaine, cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms abuse, as detailed in his 2023 memoir ‘Spare’.”
Heritage’s lawyers successfully argued that Judge Nichols’ September ruling was based on the DHS declarations and not on a personal review of the immigration files.
Harry’s confession to drug abuse would have been required information to provide on non-immigrant visa application forms, but Heritage sued DHS last year, arguing that Harry failed to mention his admitted history with drugs on the application forms he filed before he quit the UK.
The think tank has publicly called on President Donald J. Trump to order the federal agencies to release the documents.
Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom: ‘We believe the American public has a right to know whether or not Prince Harry was truthful on his application and whether he received a kind of preferential treatment’.
Trump hasn’t commented on the case since returning to the White House but has previously said that he would consider deporting Harry.
In his memoir, Harry revealed that he tried cocaine when he was 17 years old “to feel different.”
“’Of course I had been taking cocaine at that time’, he wrote in the book. ‘At someone’s house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line, and since then I had consumed some more’.
‘I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed the Queen. That’s unforgivable. He would be on his own if it was down to me’, Trump said in February 2024, referring to Harry’s departure from royal life during the late Queen Elizabeth II’s reign.
The following month, Trump added: ‘We’ll have to see if [DHS] know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action’.”
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