Viral Newark airport video sparks outrage, US Embassy says visiting not a right
Hear this story
AI-assisted summary
A person was detained at Newark Airport, prompting the U.S. Embassy in India to reiterate that visiting the U.S. is a privilege, not a right.
A witness recorded the incident and shared it on social media, alleging the detainee, possibly an Indian student, was treated harshly.
The Consulate General of India in New York is investigating the situation and is in contact with local authorities.
The U.S. Embassy in India is reminding travelers that visiting the U.S. is not a right, days after images surfaced of a person being pinned to the ground at New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport.
'The United States continues to welcome legitimate travelers to our country. However, there is no right to visit the United States,' the embassy posted across social media platforms on Tuesday. 'We cannot and will not tolerate illegal entry, abuse of visas, or the violation of U.S. law.'
While the statement wasn't tied to a particular incident, it comes on the heels of video shared by Kunal Jain, a longtime U.S. resident and self-described Indo-American social entrepreneur who moved back to India last year, according to his profile on X, formerly Twitter.
'I witnessed a young Indian student being deported from Newark Airport last night— handcuffed, crying, treated like a criminal. He came chasing dreams, not causing harm,' Jain posted on X on Sunday, along with videos and photos that have amassed more than 1.7 million views.
In interviews with India's NewsX and NDTV, Jain said he was preparing to board a United Airlines flight to New Delhi, when he spotted the person in custody.
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
'Initially that boy was sitting on the chair, but then later on what he started doing is he started (hitting) his head to the wall, and that's when I think these authorities realized that he may hurt himself or he may do something crazy,' Jain told NewsX. 'They have pinned him down on the floor and they sit on him, and that's when he started yelling and screaming.'
Jain added that authorities wanted to board the person on the plane, but the pilot said, 'No, I cannot allow as of this moment because he's violent and he could be a threat to the existing passengers.' Jain added that he and a doctor offered to speak to the person in Hindi, but were not allowed.
He doesn't know what happened next, but he and others on social media have called on the Indian government to step in and bring the person 'home.'
On Monday, the Consulate General of India, New York shared on X, 'We have come across social media posts claiming that an Indian national is facing difficulties at Newark Liberty International Airport. We are in touch with local authorities in this regard. The Consulate remains ever committed for the welfare of Indian Nationals.'
A State Department official said they've also seen the reports but don't have any additional information and referred USA TODAY to local authorities. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the airport, referred USA TODAY to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has not yet replied.
While it's unclear if the person in custody was a student, the Trump administration has been cracking down on international students and on entering the U.S. in general. Additionally, President Donald Trump's latest travel ban, which took effect Monday, bans or heavily restricts travel to U.S. by foreign nationals from nearly 20 countries – though India is not one of them.
Coming to America? What happens if you're denied entry into the US
'They don't want any foreigners unauthorized illegal foreigners to come into the country and take the advantage of the resources,' Jain told NDTV, calling that a 'great policy.' However, he added that even with foreign students legally allowed in the country, 'They are becoming more and more watchful, and every act is being monitored.'
Jain has said he isn't trying to get into politics or legal matters, but wants to see justice and human dignity.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
17 minutes ago
- CNN
DHS defends social media post calling for public to help ICE locate ‘all foreign invaders'
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a striking graphic on its official X account. Uncle Sam, a symbol of American patriotism, is depicted nailing a poster to a wall that reads, 'Help your country… and yourself.' Written underneath the poster is the sentence, 'REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS,' and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement hot line. The post — which DHS and the White House also posted to Instagram — prompted a flood of criticism, with some social media users comparing the post to authoritarian propaganda. On Thursday, at least two far-right X accounts claimed to have a hand in creating or disseminating the image before it was shared by DHS. A source within DHS told CNN the agency did not create the graphic. The DHS's Uncle Sam post has more than 81,000 likes and comes as immigration protests roil Los Angeles and other cities around the country, amid a deportation crackdown by President Donald Trump and DHS. And it marks an escalation in the agency's communication strategy, after weeks of using social media to attack or mock perceived enemies, promote ICE arrests and ridicule media reports it disagrees with. In another recent post, DHS responded to a comment appearing to question a popular X user's immigration status with a meme of a character with magnifying glasses. In May, DHS also said it was reviewing a reality TV show pitch where immigrants would compete for US citizenship, which an agency spokesperson said at the time was in the early stages of vetting and had not yet been approved or denied. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem later told a Senate committee that she had 'no knowledge' of a reality show plan. The Uncle Sam graphic is reminiscent of media used previously by other governments to provoke fear, especially of immigrants, said Elisabeth Fondren, a journalism professor at St. John's University who has studied government propaganda and communications during war times. 'This poster fits within a long history of anti-immigrant rhetoric and, yes, state propaganda,' Fondren said. 'It evokes these remnants of Cold War, fake propaganda by the Russians, or, you know, authoritarian fear mongering messages … but what I think is so interesting is that this is a call to action in an environment where we're not in a war.' In defending the Uncle Sam post, the agency told CNN that it aligns with terminology used by other officials in the executive branch. DHS pointed CNN to a number of posts from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller using terms like 'invade' or 'invaders' when referring to undocumented immigrants. Asked for comment on this story, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CNN that criticisms of the post 'are fundamentally unserious and reflect the completely juvenile state of mainstream journalism. These reporters should get off social media and start focusing on the very real victims of illegal alien crime.' 'Every American citizen should support federal law enforcement in their just effort to deport criminal illegal alien invaders from our country,' McLaughlin said in a statement. 'During the Biden Administration our borders were opened to an invasion by the very worst from around the world. Now President Trump and Secretary Noem are reversing the destruction of our nation.' Trump's overall handling of immigration tends to earn higher approval ratings than his performance on other issues, but there is also evidence that Americans are less supportive of the way he's carrying out deportations. A CNN poll in April showed 52% of Americans said Trump has gone too far in deporting undocumented immigrants. DHS's provocative social media strategy has led to a rapidly growing audience. Engagement with the DHS account has grown significantly since Trump took office; it's second only to the White House in online engagement among US government accounts, the agency said. DHS communication officials have in recent days frequently posted videos from the LA protests that it says indicate the demonstrations are not peaceful and highlight law enforcement efforts to quell disorder. The demonstrations have impacted a relatively small area of the city, mostly in a section of downtown LA, where largely peaceful daytime protests have been giving way to volatile, occasionally violent scenes each night that have resulted in hundreds of arrests. The curfew zone is about one square mile, in a city that covers more than 450 square miles. The agency's posts come as random and anonymous users on platforms like X and TikTok have also shared old and sometimes completely fake content about the unrest, projecting an image of chaos, often in an apparent attempt to juice their own engagement. The agency has also posted names, photos and alleged charges of people it has arrested as justification for ICE's operations in Los Angeles. And on Wednesday, DHS shared a post on X that said: 'Liberals don't know things.' Many of the posts to the DHS account are memes or content created by outside sources. The image of the Uncle Sam poster was posted on X last Friday, around the time tensions in Los Angeles escalated, by podcaster C. Jay Engel, who describes himself as 'Christian nationalist adjacent' and has claimed that 'nations cannot survive replacement migration.' After DHS shared the Uncle Sam image, Engel posted: 'This image came from my account. NEVER STOP POSTING.' 'The question is, 'Is there room for like-minded Christians and patriots in Tennessee?'' the podcaster, Engel, said in an October podcast, in response to a listener's question. 'Yes, there's an imperative for like-minded Christians to gather and fight with us.' Although Engel circulated the image of the Uncle Sam poster, another X user claimed to have created the image. That pseudonymous X account, which has the words 'Wake Up White Man' in its biography, is full of nativist rhetoric and reposted another X user who declared: 'Whites deserve our own nations, like everyone else is allowed to have.' The pseudonymous account appears to have been the first to post the image. CNN has requested comment from Engel and attempted to reach the X user who claimed to have created the image. CNN's Samantha Delouya contributed reporting.
Boston Globe
27 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Fiery Air India crash kills 241 people aboard, leaving 1 survivor, airline says
Indian Home Minister Amit Shah confirmed that he met the sole survivor at the hospital. A doctor said he had examined the survivor, whom he identified as Vishwashkumar Ramesh. 'He was disoriented with multiple injuries all over his body,' Dr. Dhaval Gameti told The Associated Press. 'But he seems to be out of danger.' Advertisement Another medic said Ramesh told him that immediately after the plane took off, it began descending and suddenly split in two, throwing him out before a loud explosion. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Black smoke billowed from the site where the plane crashed near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city of more than 5 million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state. Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multistory buildings with water. Charred bodies lay on the ground and parts of the fuselage were scattered around the site. Indian army teams were assisting civil authorities to clear debris and help treat the injured. Advertisement A video on social media showed the jet slowly descending as if it were landing. As soon as it disappeared from view behind rows of houses, a giant fireball filled the sky. The Associated Press was able to verify the video by matching up the flight path of the plane from the runway with the crash site and the nearby residential area. At the crash site, the tail cone of the aircraft, with its damaged stabilizer fins still attached, was lodged near the top of one of the buildings. Modi called the crash 'heartbreaking beyond words' and said 'my thoughts are with everyone affected.' Sambit Patra, a lawmaker from Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said Gujarat's former chief minister, Vijay Rupani, was among the dead. Divyansh Singh, vice president of the Federation of All India Medical Association, said at least five students from the medical college were killed on the ground and 50 others were injured. Singh said some of them were in critical condition and many people are 'feared buried in the debris.' Air India confirmed in a statement posted on X that 229 passengers and 12 crew members were killed in the crash. The only survivor was a British national of Indian origin. The flight bound for London Gatwick Airport had 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese, and one Canadian aboard. 'Our efforts now are focused entirely on the needs of all those affected, their families and loved ones,' the airline said. This is the first crash of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. Boeing said it was 'working to gather more information.' India's aviation regulatory body said the aircraft gave a mayday call, signaling an emergency, but then did not respond to the calls made by the airport traffic control. Advertisement Aviation consultant John M. Cox, the CEO of Safety Operating Systems, told the AP from Los Angeles that while the first images of the crash were poor, it appeared the aircraft had its nose up and was not climbing, which is one of the things that investigators would look at. 'The 787 has very extensive flight data monitoring — the parameters on the flight data recorder are in the thousands — so once we get that recorder, they'll be able to know pretty quickly what happened,' he said. The wide-body, twin-engine aircraft was introduced in 2009, and more than 1,000 have been delivered to dozens of airlines, according to the flightradar24 website. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said his government was in constant contact with Indian authorities and encouraged loved ones of passengers on the Air India flight to contact the foreign office. 'Our hearts and our thoughts are absolutely with the friends and families of all those affected who are going to be absolutely devastated by this awful news,' Starmer said. British Cabinet minister Lucy Powell said the government will provide 'all the support that it can' to those affected by the crash. Britain has very close ties with India. There were nearly 1.9 million people in the country of Indian descent, according to the 2021 UK census. Condolences also poured in from King Charles III, who said he and his wife, Queen Camilla, were 'desperately shocked' by the crash. 'Our special prayers and deepest possible sympathy are with the families and friends of all those affected by this appallingly tragic incident across so many nations,' he said in a statement. Advertisement The last major passenger plane crash in India was in 2020, when an Air India Express Boeing-737 skidded off a hilltop runway in southern India, killing 21 people. The worst air disaster in India was on Nov. 12, 1996, when a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight collided midair with a Kazakhstan Airlines Flight near Charki Dadri in Haryana state, killing all 349 people on board the two planes. Boeing has been in recovery mode for more than six years after Lion Air Flight 610, a Boeing 737 Max 8, plunged into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. Five months later, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing 157 passengers and crew members.
Hamilton Spectator
27 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Canada may lose access to Peace Garden airport
INTERNATIONAL PEACE GARDEN – David Pedersen drives his truck past border customs, turns up a grassy hill and stops at a ramshackle piece of tarmac on the edge of the country. Opening his car door, Pedersen drops his feet down on the warped pavement. There it is, he says: this piece of tarmac is Canada's contribution to the International Peace Garden Airport. The paved ground on Canada's side of the airport is smaller than the footprint of a community tennis court. It's not much to look at, but it allows Canada to use the North Dakota airstrip next door. Canadians can land at the airstrip, taxi the aircraft over the border to the pavement chunk in Canada, park, visit the gardens, clear customs, and take off again. But the airstrip and the taxiway, being just south of the border, are paid for by the United States. The future of this relationship, however, is in jeopardy. Canada will lose access to the airport in next eight to 15 years unless some department in the country partners with North Dakota on a rebuild. Due to federal regulations, North Dakota will need to reconstruct some of its tarmac and that will directly cut off access to Canada's slab of pavement. The Americans are looking for someone to deal with in Canada to build a new access, however they've failed to connect with a single agency willing to partner on the project. The regulation failure is that the taxiway that gives access to Canada is not at a 90-degree angle to the landing strip, according to Kyle Wanner, director of aeronautics for North Dakota, who added that Canada's pavement is too close to part of the airstrip. As a result, Canada's slab of pavement at the airport needs to move, or it won't be connected in the future. 'What will happen here is, during the short term, we'll still have access to Canadians on that taxiway moving forward,' Wanner said. 'But eventually that taxiway is going to need a reconstruct, and when it does, if Canada does not step up, or any organization, to fund any improvements on the Canadian side, the taxiway going to the Canadian apron will just be removed, and all access to Canada will cease.' Looking for ways to keep the airport connection going, North Dakota had engineers sketch a new design that would pay American dollars for a new taxiway. All that would be needed is Canadian authorities to commit to move the Canadian tarmac roughly 300 feet to the east, and connect to the taxiway at the new location. The problem is that nobody has been able to identify who in Canada is responsible to green light the project. And so while the United States prepares to reconstruct the airport, it has no confirmation that Canada will actually join in on the program and build its side of the border. 'Almost every group that we had reached out to didn't feel it was their problem, if you will, or there was something that they needed to further discuss. And so we kind of just kept going round in circles,' Wanner said. 'Does Canada want their apron or not? Do they want to continue this partnership or not? We just don't quite have an answer to that yet.' Judy Saxby, a former member of the peace gardens board of directors, said she has failed to find any answer to who is responsible for a proposed upgrade. She has been pursuing the answer of who owns the land in her spare time. 'I've been working at it for about three or four years now, and have not been able to find out who, in quotation marks, owns the little tarmac and who was responsible for building it in the first place,' Saxby told the Sun. 'There doesn't seem to be any documentation on it.' Saxby said that the problem has been not due to resistance, but that no person has been able to give a final answer. In an email in June, a spokesperson for the Province of Manitoba told the Sun that the land is on a road allowance, next to Turtle Mountain Provincial Park — both owned by the province. The spokesperson said that if any party wanted to build on the land, they would have to discuss it with the provincial government, as well as the International Boundary Commission. When the Sun asked the Manitoba NDP government if it would be interested in investing in the airport, a cabinet spokesperson said that the government does not have jurisdiction over any improvements to the Peace Garden airport. The spokesperson said that the airport is instead in the hands of the federal government. 'While the minister's office has received a proposal regarding a future expansion to the airport at the International Peace Gardens, the proposal was referred to the federal government who have sole jurisdiction over that particular airport,' wrote press secretary Caedmon Malowany on behalf of Minister of Municial and Northern Relations Glen Simard. In an email to the Sun, a departmental spokesperson for Transport Canada said that the decision over this land, such as to issue permits or approve land use applications, would fall to local governments. 'Land ownership and land use decisions are typically handled by municipal or provincial governments,' wrote the spokesperson to the Sun. 'We recommend contacting the Municipality of Boissevain–Morton, and or the Province of Manitoba.' The spokesperson said that should a project be proposed at the airport that would affect aviation safety or operations, the agency would review to ensure complaince with regulations. On his way home from the airport, Pedersen said the recent lack of upkeep at the International Peace Gardens Airport is a symbol showcasing that the Province of Manitoba overlooks airports and their significance. He said it's one of a trend across Manitoba. 'This is a symbol of a bigger, greater, problem,' Pedersen said. In the RM of Piney, a Canada-U.S. airport was discontinued in December of 2024 due to a lack of funding on the Canadian side, Pedersen said. He argued that it was a loss as the airport could have been used this year to assist wildfire efforts in the east of the province, giving surveillance planes somewhere out of which to operate. 'Especially in Manitoba, the provincial government is ignoring the contribution that the southern airports make,' he said. 'What I visualize is that we will lose more airports.' Pedersen promotes aviation in the south of the prairies, asserting that airports are crucial for emergency responses such as wildfires and medical evacuations, and that the province does not invest enough in the asset. Adam Penner, owner of Harv's Air Pilot Training near Winnipeg, said he agrees that there is a lack of funding for airports in Manitoba, and worries the Peace Garden airport will end similarly to the loss in the RM of Piney. 'It's the same kind of vibe,' Penner said. 'The Canadians can't decide who's responsible for it, and nobody does anything, it's a real shame.' He said the Peace Gardens airport is a beautiful place to visit. The gardens are nearby, as well as the value of being able to clear customs going north and south of the border. Penner uses the airstrip on business roughly 25 times a year, including for trips to Minot, N.D. The United States this summer is spending $3.5 million to rehabilitate all airport pavement on the U.S. side of the border. Workers cannot cross over to Canada due to jurisdictional issues — and North Dakota has been unable to find a partner in Canada to organize the project. 'I'm a bit embarrassed,' said Penner. 'The Americans can resurface the entire runway, and we can't even get our act together on a little ramp.' Wanner told the Sun that North Dakota is seriously interested in making something work between the two countries, and that there is still years to organize before the airport performs reconstruction that would cut off Canada's existing parking pad. 'I appreciate any positive publicity on the situation,' said Wanner when reached by the Sun. 'I would be happy if somebody in government would actually pay the phone call and say, 'Hey, let's figure this out.'' Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
