Antiwar.com Blog — What gets me about this crap is that the southern border is a sieve for illegal aliens. But if you are a citizen you get hassled. Last year I got grilled about why I went to Canada!!
I went through the main line at US customs at San Francisco International Airport. After scanning my passport, the first officer sent me to a different station than the others she was processing. I don’t know if this was a random check, or if I looked like a terrorist because I hadn’t shaved in a day, or if my name popped up when she scanned the passport.
At the next station, I was questioned about what I did for a living. I explained that I was a webmaster. That was not sufficient, so I had to mention Antiwar.com. That sent me to the next escalation and a third station.
At the third station, I was questioned about the nature of Antiwar.com, the forum I went to, and everything I did in Malaysia. The officer looked through all the literature in detail. He made me unfurl an 8-foot banner I had brought back with pictures of all the speakers. He asked me about each speaker in detail, asked me about my relationship with the former PM Tun Dr. Mahathir, who he explained was “very anti-American.” He didn’t just go through my luggage, he examined the political content of the books and papers I had. He made comments about much of it. He was alarmed by the copy of Helen Caldicott’s book because the cover has a photo of Bush, Cheney, and Powell smiling beneath a mushroom cloud. He found it “anti-American.” Then he saw that it was personally autographed to me, which he clearly didn’t like.
“Last year I got grilled about why I went to Canada!!”
I live near the Michigan / Canada border. For whatever reason, I *always* get hassled when I try to re-enter the USA via the Detroit tunnel or bridge. This has been the case for at least 14 years. I simply stopped going to Canada because of the hassle.
I never have any trouble getting back into the USA from a flight from Germany.
My years in the civil rights movement disabused me long ago of what freedoms really exist. But, I have one funny story about an airport confrontation like this.
Landing in Scotland for an extended backpacking trip in the Highlands, I was interned incommunicado by an ambitious immigration twerp — since he’d found a letter in my backpack from another American active in the anti-war movement over there. This was during the VietNam War.
His mates knew him for the dickhead he was and pretty much stood around while he questioned me, etc.. He threatened me with deportation and even brought the pilot in from the plane I’d been on, US to Scotland.
To keep it reasonably short, he got extremely thorough, sifting through everything in my pack and — if you know any serious backpakers, you know they might even drill holes in their toothbrush handle to save weight — he held up this bag of white powder he discovered.
“Ah-hah. and what is this?”
I explained it was Woolite — for cold water clothes washing in the back country. Whereupon he took out a pinch and snorted it — to prove to everyone I was a drug smuggler as well as an international terrorist.
He spouted bubbles out every orifice above his neck for a couple of minutes and eventually had to leave the room. Whereupon his buddies let me go. Said it was the best laugh they’d had in months.
At least it wasn’t as bad as France, where you get sent to jail.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1649377,00.html
Puhleese… stop the whining… In case you haven’t noticed recently, there’s a few groups of people out there out to make us “drown in our own blood.” So if this ounce of prevention is what it takes, live with it.
Next thing you’ll whine about is how come we had another 9-11? How could the governement let this happen??? Cause whiners like this that cry every time they’re made to take their shoes off for the TSA…
AB CD,
Of all your posts, this one takes the cake. The whole point is that this is the US – my country and I don’t like it. If I wanted to be in France or Stalinist Russia – I’d go there.
Get a clue – loosing rights isn’t a good idea regardless of the reason. Sometimes it has to be tolerated, but it should never be blindly accepted, and should always be questioned.
If you have a problem with the way you are treated by any employee of the federal government, all you need to do is get their badge number and complain to their supervisor. If you are not satisfied with the supervisor’s solution to the problem, get his/her badge number and complain about both employees in writing to your US Congressman or US Senator. It’s is called “Going Congressional”.
Getting asked a couple questions is not being “hassled”. They’re just doing their job. Since when do we hav e the “right” to not be questioned by peace officers.
The problem is that these officers are looking for the wrong thing. Anti-american content and involvement should be a factor in finding a terrorist, but not the major factor as this guy has been trained to focus on.
The real give away is how nervous and prone to lying terrorists and criminals are. The answers to the questions aren’t as important as their body language and how they answer them.
El Al airlines, Israel’s flagship carrier, has been interviewing every person who gets on their planes for decades. The interview is short and professional, and conducted by highly trained interviewers. They know what to look for.
We should just hire El Al to train our customs officers.
This whole story sounds like a bunch of made up bunk. To believe that someone would be hassled in ever increasing ways in the way that this guy was, and then just let go because the hasslers ‘recognized’ a good guy in a photo, sounds farfetched at best.
>> “asked me about my relationship with the former PM Tun Dr. Mahathir, who he explained was “very anti-American.””
You expect me to believe that a pencil-pusher in Customs would actually know the political leanings of Dr. Mahathir?
I suspect that this is just some guy trying to raise some traffic for his blog, and apparently succesfully since his ‘story’ was published here.
TC
I agree.
What these agents are doing is actually counter-productive to the “War on Terror”. The people being harassed are not terrorists. Their harassment will only lead to a backlash against border agents interviewing Americans which in turn will end up creating the holes for terrorists to exploit.
As T.C. Points out, El Al has made it a fine art to figure out just who are truly suspicious and who are ripe for harassment. Instead of hiring all these high priced “consultants” to give advice on security, they could get El Al to help out instead.
The TSA has made a mockery of security. It is high time some actual security was imposed. Security does not mean that every single person need a strip search either. And why the “no fly list”. If they are a security risk then arrest and charge them !!!
Coming back to the US from Montreal – US customs searched my car, by removing door and other panels, pulled up the upholestry, xrayed everything we had and of course searched us thouroughly. The found nothing, never appolgised and simply said you are free to go – and they never cleaned up the mess they made of the car. This was 1982.
If you are tired of getting hassled at the canadian border, then dont go through the “authorized” crossing zones. I grew up in a little town just south of the border, and if you cross over about 1/2 mile on either side of the border station you dont have deal with the customs/passport BS.
Trust me, it works.
Tallwookie — don’t keep us in suspense. What is the name of the small town? We can’t canvass the border!
Customs is also responsible for screening passengers for items that promote the overthrow of the US government. It seems to me that the officer was making sure that the items you had didn’t fit that classification.