What&#39;s the legal consequence of leaving the United States without using one&#39;s U.S. passport? I read on https://travel.state.gov: U.S. nationals, including dual nationals, must use a U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States. Dual nationals may also be required by the foreign country to use its passport to enter and leave that country. Use of the foreign passport to travel to or from a country other than the United States is not inconsistent with U.S. law. What's the legal consequence of leaving the United States without using one's U.S. passport?
The State Department is mischaracterizing the law, which requires only that the US citizen &quot;bear&quot; a valid US passport, not that the US citizen &quot;use&quot; the passport. This law, 8 USC 1185(b), used to have a fairly stiff penalty, and it used to apply only in time of war. When the wartime element was removed in 1978, so was the penalty. It now reads Except as otherwise provided by the President and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may authorize and prescribe, it shall be unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid United States passport. If a US citizen attempts to leave the US without a valid US passport, there is a very small chance that the departure could be prevented by a CBP officer, but in the normal course of affairs the traveler would not even encounter a CBP officer, so the possibility is very remote indeed. There is nothing, however, that prevents a US citizen who also holds a passport issued by another country from using the other passport while also carrying a valid US passport. See also What is the penalty for US citizens entering/leaving the US on a foreign passport? at Travel and Can someone be penalized for an &quot;unlawful&quot; act if no penalty is specified? on this site.
As someone with ties to the "foreign" community in the United States, I see these "marriages of convenience" from time to time. In their most "legitimate" form, the couple will move to the same address and "technically" live together, but without consummating the marriage so that it can later be legally annulled. American immigration authorities counter this by asking each spouse about the other's underwear (literally!). Some "marriages of convenience" are legal, insofar as they technically conform to the marriage documents, e.g. regarding "co habitation," even while violating the spirit of the law. Others don't. Your best chance of attacking such "marriages" is not regarding the marriage itself (basically only the couple can decide what constitutes a valid marriage), but rather "compliance" with the marriage documents. That's something any law enforcement officer can understand.
The green card should always be at hand Yeah, he can't do that. He needs a green card in his possession anytime he's not on private property. Obviously for instance leaving it in the gym locker while you're at the gym is ok, but no, you can't dash off to the grocery store without it, on the logic that it's "just in town". Just like I can't make a milk run without my driver's license. So this idea of dashing off on a 400 mile adventure, is Right Out. He should have absolutely refused to travel without the documents in hand. If they say "get off the property or we'll call the cops", then tell the cops "I can't leave without my passport/green card" which the cops will back up, because they know the law and they know how trafficking works. The right to strut around the USA without any ID at all is reserved for US citizens only, and even that is being stripped away by ever-changing laws. Those documents are someone else's property The Green Card is the property of the USA and is not hers to steal. The passport is the property of the Philippine government and is not hers to steal. She didn't take your stuff, she took theirs. So she is guilty of a Federal crime, and the long arm of Philippine law may have an "opinion" on the matter also. Of course, most people don't think of it that way. They think your ID is your property so they think they're only messing with you. I would absolutely, positively report theft of the passport to the Philippine consulate. (Or rather, just report a missing passport, and be free about explaining the circumstances). One might hope that a phone call to consular staff might scare her straight, and get her to send it along. Most likely the green card would be in there also. Or, he could pay the fees to have a replacement passport issued. However the important one is the Green Card, since that establishes your right to be in the USA. On that one, you must consult an immigration lawyer and find out what you need to do. You certainly can get replacement green cards (not cheap), but admitting you don't have yours could cause you problems. People often seize documents for a reason And what makes me think that is, the uncle is a grown adult and the daughter's elder, and I thought that meant something in the Philippines. He is supposed to be more adult and more responsible. As such, he should be responsible for his own documents. Yet, this seems to be in the daughter's hands; this raises red flags. Maybe what she did was a harmless prank. But usually, taking an immigrant's documents is done for an entirely evil reason. Either they are forcing them into indentured servitude (also called "trafficking") - so if he is now in a situation where he is being extorted to do work in a worse situation or worse wage than he'd take willingly, then he is a trafficking victim, and the taking documents is part of the plot. The US has some legal protections for trafficking victims. Or they are "setting him up" for failure in some other way - for instance, out of idle malice, the niece might be planning to call immigration and report him as being illegal, hoping he'd be found with no green card, and deported for not having it.
Immigration and naturalization is pretty far out of my comfort zone, but I'm confident that the answer is yes. Although people often believe that a foreign embassy is considered the territory of that country, I don't know of any law that supports that belief. Instead, through the Vienna Convention, the embassy grounds remain the territory of the host state but are provided a variety of protections and immunities because of their diplomatic status. With the embassy on U.S. soil, the child would therefore satisfy the "born ... in the United States" prong of the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause.* But that would not be the end of the analysis, as birthright citizenship also requires not just that the child is born in the United States, but also that the child be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." So if the child were born to an American citizen who had entered the Indian embassy to get a travel visa, the child would be both born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, making it eligible for birthright citizenship. But if the child were born to Indian ambassador or to diplomatic staff, who would generally be able to claim diplomatic immunity, that child would not be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and would not be able to claim birthright citizenship. Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36, 73, (1872) ("The phrase, ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States."). * I haven't been able to find any cases saying this explicitly, but all the cases involving children born in foreign embassies sort of skip over the question as though they just assume that the child was born in the United States. See, e.g., Raya v. Clinton, 703 F. Supp. 2d 569 (W.D. Va. 2010); Nikoi v. Attorney Gen. of U.S., 939 F.2d 1065 (D.C. Cir. 1991) These cases also go on to conclude that those children are not citizens of the United States, because they are not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
The decision will be made by whichever country arrests him first (although a minority of countries allow for the trial of people who break their criminal laws in absentia). Needless to say, if nobody manages to arrest him ever, he will not face any criminal consequences except the issuance of an arrest warrant possibly accompanied by a pre-existing conviction in absentia if arrested in countries that allow for such a proceeding. Normally, in these circumstances, either country would have jurisdiction under its own laws to prosecute and punish the criminal, and many extradition treaties would not require the extradition of someone who committed a crime punished domestically in the state in whose custody the criminal is as part of the same course of events. Many countries will not extradite someone if they could face the death penalty in the receiving country. But, sometimes law enforcement in a country with a less serious penalty will intentionally defer to law enforcement in a country with a more serious penalty that is simultaneously trying to arrest him. Ordinarily, law enforcement is not authorized to use deadly force to arrest someone who is simultaneously being arrested by law enforcement from another country against either the arrestee or the law enforcement from the other country. Indeed, using deadly force against another country's law enforcement officers who are carrying out a lawful arrest in their own country would ordinarily be considered an act of war. U.S. double jeopardy provisions of the constitution do not prohibit a second prosecution of an offender in these circumstances because of a first prosecution by another sovereign, but many prosecutors in many countries would decline to prosecute someone a second time for the offense that they have already been convicted of in exercise of their discretion, and many judges would consider time served in another country for the same offense as a factor in setting their own sentence.
Citizens likely have an absolute right to enter the US. This hasn't been addressed directly by the Supreme Court, but here are some cases that come close. The Fifth Circuit, in William Worthy, Jr. v. US, 328 F.2d 386 (5th Cir. 1964): We think it is inherent in the concept of citizenship that the citizen, when absent from the country to which he owes allegiance, has a right to return, again to set foot on its soil. The Supreme Court, in Tuan Anh Nguyen v. INS 533 U.S. 53 (2001) said that conferring citizenship on a person would give "the absolute right to enter [the US]". This wasn't necessary for the holding in this case, which was about whether the person was a citizen, so this could be considered dicta. Fikre v. FBI, 23 F. Supp. 3d 1268 (D. Or. 2014). (not an appellate case) said: U.S. citizen’s right to reenter the United States entails more than simply the right to step over the border after having arrived there. At some point, governmental actions taken to prevent or impede a citizen from reaching the [border] infringe upon the citizen’s right to reenter the United States. Even if we assume that citizens do not have an absolute right to re-entry, the Equal Protection Clause likely bars a religion-based criteria for citizen re-entry. Citizens are protected by the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. This prohibits the government discriminating based on a suspect classification (race, religion, national origin) unless such law passes strict scrutiny. Without making a prediction about whether such a hypothetical statute could pass strict scrutiny, I'll go as far as I can and strongly guess that the government could not prohibit citizen re-entry to the United States based solely on their declared religion.
Generally a person can leave money to any person or organization that the testator pleases. In some US states, a minimum portion must be left to family (spouse and/or children). Aside from that, there is no requirement and no exclusions. US law prohibits gifts (and other support) to a few specific organizations which the government has officially listed as terrorist, and I suspect the Taliban is one of these. Gifts by will would be covered by this law just as gifts from a living person. But if a living person in the US can lawfully make a gift to an organization, a similar gift may be left by will. Even if a particular bequest was unlawful, that would not make the will as a whole invalid. Edit: It seems that the Afghan Taliban is not on the list of terrorist organizations maintained by the US, and so there would be no bar to a US citizen leaving money to that group. There would be to groups actually on the list. The general principle above holds.
An individual obtains due process rights upon entering into the United States. For a recent write-up on this question, see this piece at Reason. The people Trump is talking about generally aren't being denied admission at an established, legal border crossing; they're coming across wherever they can get through, and only being discovered by federal agents thereafter. Because they're already in the United States, they have due process rights. As for cross-border interactions with ICE or CBP, the extent of due process protections is still an open question. SCOTUS took it up last year, but it kicked the case back to a lower court rather than deciding it.