I came across a story on Facebook asking us to publicize the detention of UK citizen Becky Burke who is being held by ICE. She’s evidently unhappy to be wearing a orange jumpsuit while languishing in detention. She got there in a somewhat round about way. First Canadian authorities wouldn’t let her in when she tried to cross into Canada from the US. When the trotted her back to the US, the US authorities decided she was an illegal alien or undocumented immigrant or whatever term you prefer. They placed her in a detention facility. That’s the short story. If you are curious, you can read more.

Facebook stories being Facebook stories, details were sparse. Also, the source is mostly her Dad and so things are worded in a way that is rather favorable to Becky. Among other things he characterizes her situation as a “visa mixup”. The story as told in Facebook had me scratching my head a little. One question was “Why would a British citizen traveling as a tourist be refused entry into Canada?” British citizens don’t need visas when traveling as tourists to Canada. What could the “mixup” possibly be?

I had to google to learn more. Becky evidently traveled to the US, was here a while, then she tried to enter Canada. That’s where things first went wrong. From the BBC.

“However, when she reached the border, Mr Burke said the Canadian authorities denied her entry as they were concerned she may try to work illegally.”

When the Canadians escorted her back to the US, the American authorities agree with the Canadian’s interpretation that she has been working and plans to work while traveling through the US and Canada. So, the American’s weren’t letting her stay in the US without a work visa either. But unlike Canada, the US couldn’t just refuse her entry because she’s already here. They put her in detention.

Now you might as “Was she working”? After all, if she wasn’t working, this is horrible unfair. She evidently did housework for host families while they provided her with accommodations. Her trip was organized through a program called “Workaway”, which sort of implies that the program organizing it know it’s considered “work” in some sense the word. Becky’s family evidently considers this to be some sort of “cultural exchange”. Maybe it is. Working as an Au Pair is considered “cultural exchange.” Doing so requires a work visa.

The reaction from Workaway to her plight is:

A spokesperson for the company said it was “very sad” to hear about what had happened but that it was “the responsibility of the host and person travelling to make sure they are within the law, have the correct visa or permit and insurance in place before travelling”.

[..]

“Unfortunately if these warning are not followed and someone attempts to enter the United States without the correct permissions or visas in place then the US border control are within their rights to refuse entry.”

Anyway, Becky is now detained in the US and is evidently unhappy about the conditions in detention. A Daily Mail article describes the food and other conditions:

‘She is sharing a cell, surviving on a diet of cold rice, potatoes, and beans (she is vegan), and has limited access to phone calls,’ [her father] wrote.

‘Visitors are restricted to speaking through a glass screen via telephone.

‘All her possessions have been confiscated, and she feels isolated and desperate to come home.’

I guess you don’t get some veggies in detention? I would have expected the dorm cafeteria classic “mixed vegetables” would be served. I’d guess she can’t surf the internet either. I’m sure I would not enjoy being in detention either. I’d want to get out.

How could that be accomplished?

Melissa Chavin, a US immigration lawyer based in London, said Ms Burke could be released either through voluntary departure or expedited removal, but the process of appearing in front of a judge as part of voluntary departure could be delayed because judges had been fired by the Trump administration.

Voluntary departure is experiencing big delays due to judges being fired or resigning. Ok… that’s slow. Potentially it is very, very slow. Slower than normal. Because Trump.

What about this “expedited removal” thing? As far as I can tell, expedited removal needs only a low levels administrator and can be supposedly be done in one day. Many articles describing it seem to thing the swiftness of the process is a bad thing because it doesn’t give people seeking asylum time to make their case. But I’m under the impression Cheryl Burke is not seeking asylum for persecution in the UK. So I would think she might jump at this chance. And Trump has evidently expanded the expedited removal process.

The 2nd Trump administration, however, has expanded it to the maximum, to apply to foreign nationals encountered anywhere in the United States who have been continuously present in the United States for less than two years.

She seems to have been here less than two years.

The new rule appears to be described here. As far as I can tell, it could apply to her case. I don’t know why immigration officials did not apply this process to her– the articles don’t say. It sounds like if it was applied, she would no longer be in the detention center. That would seem to be a nice thing.

But also, you evidently can’t ask for expedited removal. Google’s nifty AI thing currently says

No, you cannot request expedited removal; it is a process initiated solely by immigration authorities against individuals they believe entered the United States illegally and are subject to expedited removal procedures, meaning you cannot ask to be removed quickly through this process; if you are facing deportation, you should consult an immigration attorney to understand your options.

In any case, two downsides of expedited removal is the person removed by this process can not enter the US for 5 years or possibly longer and there is an order of removal put on your record.

A British Member of Parliament (MP) is evidently involved in some way and FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office) are evidently in contact with local authorities. Even though technically you can’t ask for expedited removal, I would think the FCDO might suggest it to an official who would then say, “Hey! Yeah. If I decide to do this, she’ll be out quickly! Problem solved!”

Speculating, perhaps the British MP or FCDO is asking to not use expedited removal? Dunno. Anyway, I thought people might find this story interesting. It’s a bit out of the ordinary relative to other immigration stories.

As usual, this is an open thread. Talk about whatever you like. (I’ll leave comments on the other thread open for a bit since perhaps we’ll want ones on immigration near the top of comments.)

Just extending the old thread. I’ll move today’s comments here. Open thread.

Jim had Covid; I did not. We both felt fine but stayed at home. I was bored. So, I decided to do something peculiar which ultimately resulted in me having a “yogurt question” or more specifically a “fauxgurt” question. I would try to make “yogurt” not using real starter, but using probiotic pills. Because the FDA does not recognize this as “yogurt”, I will call it “fauxgurt”.

Anyway, I bought some pills that contained four strains of lactobacillus. To make “fauxgurt” I did something similar to my “normal” yogurt making procedure to make yogurt. My normal procedure is similar to most people’s normal kitchen procedure but happens to include inulin. (This can make the yogurt creamier.) I do hold near boiling for “a while” to denature the proteins in the milk. I normally culture at 40C. (I use a sous vide device to keep at temperature.)

Anyway: instead of adding “a blob” of Fage yogurt to start, I added the contents of two probiotic pills. So: to be clear, my intention was to add zero, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus or Streptococcus thermophilus or anything from any commercial yogurt of starter. The goal was to see if I would get a yogurt like product using the stuff in the pill.

Because “the intertubes” fauxgurt people making stuff from pro-biotic pills point out some of these grow best at lower temperatures than the standard yogurt bacteria, I googled a bit. Then I hit on culturing at 37C, which I rounded to 98.5F on my sous vide device.) So, initially, my two main differences in technique were culture at a lowish temperature (98.5F) and use the pro-biotic pills. I also only sacrifice a cup and a half of milk to this test.

I watched and waited. The stuff had not set up in the “normal” amount of time. Grow more slowly is all the fauxgurt people on the web suggest will happen. So, I thought “no problem”. I went to bed at midnight. When I got up around 7:30 am. The fauxgurt was set. It took a long time. I hadn’t specifically written down times… but possibly it had been culturing 19 or 20 hours when I woke up? The quality? So, so. Nevertheless, my thought was “success”!

I then used this fauxgurt as a starter. Used as a starter, the second batched gelled in 3 hours. The fauxgurt people on the intertubes also say the fauxgurt takes less time on subsequent batches. For. Reasons. They also say the quality of the fauxgurt will improve. But the quality of the 2nd batch was not as great as real yogurt. Oh well. If it really is mostly the pro-biotic, maybe that’s ok.

But. Naturally. Niggling questions arose.

Are the bacteria in my fauxgurt really completely or even mostly those in the pro-biotic from the pill? I mean supposedly, various lactobacillus loves inulin. The inulin had been in the cupboard a long time. And this fauxgurt took a long time compared to real yogurt. Maybe all that happened was the small amount of lactobacillus on the inulin grew preferentially, and my fauxgurt is dominated by a bunch of bacterial of completely unknown pedigree? That is: it is not AKC quality fauxgurt from the pill. Instead, it is mutt fauxgurt. (It is edible by the way. I tried it. I did not die.)

So… I repeated the same process but leaving out the pill. Guess what? Somewhere between 14 hours and 20 hours, the inulin-milk only fauxgurt gelled. I know has a preferred hypothesis: something on the inulin?

But I had another hypothesis: What if I leave out the pill and also leave out the inulin? This time I also wanted to get the time better. So I started fairly early. I did the same thing– but with milk only. Culture at 98.5F. This time I checked time carefully. I totally left it alone for 5 hours, then checked every hour. Around 13 hours, the milk mixture started to look a little viscous. At 14 hours, it had gelled– so it was a somewhat runny fauxgurt. It was 1:30 in the morning, so I went to bed. By the next morning it had set.

So my fauxgurt question is : Why did this set? (I have two hypotheses. But that is the question. I’d like to hear any and all hypothesis people have– especially those who have more food science, chemistry or bio background than I do. That’s a heck of a lot of people.)

I should also note: The fact that this set in 14 hours has the consequence that I do not believe claims made by fauxgurt people to have multiplied what’s in the pill unless it started to set in quite a bit less than 14 hours. (I’m willing to provisionally believe it might be the target bacteria if, using their process, it set in less than 14 hours, or they sent their stuff out to test using a method that identifies the exact strain of bacteria in their fauxgurt. I would at least think it is not a waste of money to try the recipe and then spend money to verify the species of bacteria. )

But for now, do any of you have hypotheses on why the milk only set? (Note: it’s fine to say my kitchen and process are not entirely sterile. It’s not. I don’t want a process that steralizes to the degree from canning. I don’t want a process involving running HEPA filters. I don’t want to start with Ultra pasturized. I do boil my jars, tops, spoons, exposed parts of thermometers. But I do allow the milk to sit on the counter while it cools.)

Open thread. Discussions of fauxgurt, yogurt, politics all allowed.

Happy 2025!

Open Thread.

I’m off to another competition; this one is in Ohio. Jim will be a dance widower until Saturday. I’m starting an open thread to prevent the comments from being to long. Meanwhile, this is me dancing Waltz at last weeks comp. (There will be no other competitions for me until February.)

Wish me luck. I will need it.

The 2024 election is now in your rear view mirror. Jim knows I can’t prevent myself from watching presidential election returns until the weeeeee hours. It doesn’t matter whose running or who wins. I have to watch.

In this election, I wanted both to lose. That wasn’t going to happen. Jim bought wine and suggested we watch a Jason Stathem movie. I drank wine and watched. He tried to get me to watch another one, but I couldn’t prevent myself from going to the computer.

I admit I was surprised to see so many “pink” swing states on the election map. I still consider the idea of “coin flip” right– but “coin flip” doesn’t always end up close. It just means “we really don’t know”. To those who called the flip– maybe you were just lucky, maybe you “knew” something.

I admit to being dubious of the Iowa poll because… well… 3% for RFK Jr? I thought that couldn’t be right. I tend to suspect that was a sign that some people answering were screwing with the polsters. (Thomas Fuller: I know you don’t approve of this. And you think polsters have some way of dealing with it. But approve or not, I think it happens. I’m dubious of the notion polsters can really do much to fully detect of correct for it. Anytime someone “corrects” for anything they should just admit there is a problem and widen their uncertainty margins.)

As for my addition to watching the election results: It is very interesting to watch ‘news’, ‘semi-news’, ‘commentary’ and ‘comedy’ groups during this period. It always has been, but it’s even more so now.

Anyway, we are no in the ‘post election’ period. Soon we enter the ‘pre-inauguration’ period.

Open Thread.

Need a new thread..

This is going to be an open thread. But I think a lot of you know I’ve been disappearing to compete and you are curious. Below is a video of me competing Tango with my pro (aka teacher), Vladyslav Nalyvaychuk. I also danced Waltz, Foxtrot and VW. The order is always WTFVW, so I’ve put links in that order.

These videos are from the quarter final in…. here’s a mouthful “Rising Star Open Smooth Senior Championship”. I was pleased to make the Semi-final. I did not make the final. (I think I was the only Bronze level dancer who entered. Everyone else dances “silver” or “gold” levels. So if tons of people look better than I do– they mostly are.)

Waltz: https://youtu.be/9jUUZUzwGcs
Tango:

Foxtrot: https://youtu.be/crvoy8eECEY
Viennese Waltz: https://youtu.be/xlhrS2ln8ok

Open Thread:
Edit: Closed. New post open.

Comments have exploded and the previous post is hanging up on me. Open thread.