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White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant on Friday night because she works for President Donald Trump. A co-owner of the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, asked Ms Sanders and her family to leave as a protest against the Trump administration.
She told the Washington Post that she decided to ask the Trump spokeswoman to leave the 26-seat, "farm-to-table" restaurant after talking to her staff. "Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave," she said she told them. "They said yes."
The incident comes days after Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was booed at a Mexican restaurant in Washington DC. Critics of the Red Hen's decision said that it was discriminatory. However, others compared the restaurant's decision to a recent Supreme Court ruling in favour of a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, in a case seen by many conservatives as a test for religious freedom.
WaPo - the owner of the Red Hen explains
[...] She [Ms Wilkinson (the proprietor)] knew Lexington, population 7,000, had voted overwhelmingly against Trump in a county that voted overwhelmingly for him. She knew the community was deeply divided over such issues as Confederate flags. She knew, she said, that her restaurant and its half-dozen servers and cooks had managed to stay in business for 10 years by keeping politics off the menu.
[...] It was important to Wilkinson, she said, that Sanders had already been served — that her staff had not simply refused her on sight. And it was important to her that Sanders was a public official, not just a customer with whom she disagreed, many of whom were included in her regular clientele.
"They offered to pay," Wilkinson said. "I said, 'No. It's on the house.' "
See also: A(ustralian)BC news
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday June 25 2018, @09:44PM (3 children)
You can't treat a lone jaywalker the same as you'd treat a 500,000 people marching in a protest. A police officer can issue a jaywalker a ticket quickly and efficiently. What are you doing to do with 500,000 people jaywalking together, put them in a holding camp for a year while a handful of officers get's around to writing each one a ticket?
Add to that the fact that you must be inside the US in order to apply for asylum. [uscis.gov]
So you're REQUIRED to commit that jaywalking if you don't want to die in your home country.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @10:12PM (2 children)
Wrong. There's an embassy and 9 US consulates in Mexico where non-US citizens can apply for asylum without risking arrest by illegally crossing the border.
(Score: 3, Informative) by linuxrocks123 on Tuesday June 26 2018, @05:05AM (1 child)
US embassies and consulates can't process asylum applications: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-obtain-protection-us-embassy-consulate.html [nolo.com]
You can, however, apply for asylum at an official US border crossing. Lawyers advise not doing that, though, because then the one border official you happen by chance to speak to gets to decide whether you live or die.
You have a stronger chance if you apply for asylum after getting into the US -- either with a visa, or by illegal entry. So of course asylum seekers are going to commit the misdemeanor to get the better chance.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday June 26 2018, @04:47PM
Parent is correct, asylum applications aren't processed there. Instead you apply there for refugee or parole status which can allow you legal entry.
This seems like an easy thing to fix too, if we were going to touch this law.