US court to hear challenge to Prince Harry’s visa after revelations about drug use

Prince Harry’s US immigration records must be taken in light of revelations about drug use in his recent book, as a conservative think tank will argue in federal court next week.

The Heritage Foundation is suing the US government to find out whether it acted according to procedure in granting the Duke of Sussex a US visa. Under US immigration law, evidence of past drug use may be grounds for rejecting an application.

The case will be heard by a federal judge on June 6 in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

The Heritage Foundation has filed a complaint under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking to compel the government to release Harry’s immigration file. “The requested information is of immense public interest,” reads an amended complaint filed on May 5.

“The widespread and continued media coverage has brought to the fore the question of whether DHS [Departamento de Segurança Interna] properly admitted the Duke of Sussex in light of the fact that he has publicly admitted to essential elements of a number of drug offenses in the United States and abroad.”

The original request for Harry’s records was rejected because Harry had not indicated that he “consented to the release of his information,” the US Department of Justice said in court documents.

Furthermore, the DOJ argues that “citations to speculations about Prince Harry’s visa status are not sufficient to meet the standard” to speed up the document release process.

The Heritage Foundation has been one of the most influential conservative think tanks in Washington. Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom foundation, tweeted on Thursday that there was public interest in releasing Harry’s records.

“Given their extensive admissions of drug use, typically disqualifying entry into the United States, the American people deserve answers to the serious questions raised by the evidence,” he wrote in a Twitter post.

“Did DHS actually look the other way, pick favorites or fail to respond adequately to any potential false statements by Prince Harry?”

A CNN asked a representative for Prince Harry for comment.

Harry recently confessed to using several recreational party drugs in his explosive memoir “Spare”, published in January.

The Duke of Sussex has admitted to using cocaine, smoking marijuana and experimenting with magic mushrooms. Harry, who moved to California with Meghan in 2020, has opened up about his cocaine experiences as a teenager.

“Clear. I was using cocaine at this time. At someone’s country house, during a filming weekend, I was offered a career [de cocaína]and I’ve done a few more since then,” revealed Harry.

“It wasn’t a lot of fun and it didn’t make me particularly happy as it seemed to make everyone around me, but it made me feel different, and that was the main goal.”

Harry described himself as a “deeply unhappy seventeen-year-old boy, willing to try almost anything that would alter the status quo”.

Elsewhere in the autobiography, the fifth-in-line to the throne discussed switching from smoking to marijuana during his days at Eton College, as well as revealing that he experimented with magic mushrooms during a trip to the United States.

Harry said he stayed briefly at actress Courteney Cox’s house, where “we saw a huge box of black diamond mushroom chocolates” and he and a friend ate several and “washed them down with tequila”.

Prince Harry’s autobiography wasn’t the first time the royals have touched on his recreational drug use when he was younger.

He previously spoke with Oprah Winfrey about how he abused drugs and alcohol in his late 20s and early 30s as a coping mechanism for real-life pressures.

“I was willing to drink, I was willing to do drugs,” he said. “I was willing to try to do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling.”