So here’s a thing that happened just up the road a piece.
I was held by Vermont border guards for two hours in the middle of the night on my way to visit Nashville. They searched my bags at least five times. I could not help but notice how often my lingerie and “sexy underwear” were mentioned, how often the condoms they found were looked upon scathingly, and how most of the four male officers’ questions pertained to both. I was baffled as to why this was any of their business and unsure of what their objective was, other than fondling lady’s undergarments. In the end, having nothing to go on, they gave me a limited stay visa of two weeks and let me go – at 3 am in the middle of nowhere.
The above account is from a 24-year-old Canadian woman, writing under the alias “Clay Nikiforuk.” And her lengthy detention and abandonment by Our Sainted Protectors wasn’t the end of her troubles; she would later find out that she’d been flagged as a suspected prostitute.
That discovery came the next time she tried to cross into the US — this time on a flight from Montreal to Miami. Unfortunately for her, she was on her way to a vacation in Aruba with a married man. And here’s where our Border Patrol turned into the Sex Cops.
Righteous, the officer demanded what exactly I was doing in a bed with a married man.
“That’s actually none of your business.”
I had kicked the hornet’s nest. Inflamed, he raised his voice at me that it was his business and that adultery was a crime in America — a crime that he could deny me entry for.
…The next thing I knew he was searching my bags, pulling out condoms and waving them in my face. “I could have you charged with being a working girl! The proof is right here!”
All I could do is shake my head. This can’t be real.
“This is absurd,” I murmured. But he was on a roll.
“You want me to call his wife? I’ll tell her!”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“She knows.”
Eventually, the blueshirt had to admit his power was limited to slut-shaming, and let her pass — with an admonition to change her wicked ways.
He could also, of course, add some fresh detail to her ICE profile. Which became clear at the US Customs office in the Aruban airport, on her way back home.
I was detained, yelled at, patted down, fingerprinted, interrogated, searched, moved from room to room and person to person without food, water or being told what was going on for what seemed like forever. Just as I thought they were tiring of me and going to refuse me entry but at least let me back into Aruba, a ‘Bad Cop’ type took me to a distant, isolated office and yelled at me that I was full of shit. He had found information online that in the last couple of years I had been modelling and acting. This, he concluded, was special code for sex work, and I was never going to enter the U.S.A. ever again.
She ended up booking a direct flight from Aruba to Canada, bypassing the nightmare of our occasionally unhinged security bureaucracy. She’s actually been banned from the US for five years — presumably enough time to shape up, settle down, and marry a nice fella.
I feel so much safer, knowing our borders are protected from foreign hussies.
The border is such a crapshoot. A crapshoot with loaded dice.
I remember when the train used to go to Montreal. I’d take a weekend up there and watch the customs/immigration officers racially profile on the way back. 100 people on the train, maybe 7 people of color, and guess who gets a trip to the lounge car for questioning? A white middle-aged guy in a suit could have carried a rocket launcher and bale of marijuana past them.
Law enforcement officers are generally socially and politically conservative. Add the free hand they get at the border and you get the Border Patrol for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a la Saudi Arabia.
I generally get through fine, because I am that white middle aged guy in a suit. But it is also about attitude. I make sure that I stay calm and patient at the border. Friends of mine who are less able to conceal the contempt in their eyes get stopped all the time. That “You are so wasting my time” look is a ticket to the back room. Shouldn’t be that way, but who’s to stop them?
America is still scared shitless of terrorism and the border guys know that. They know they could take out your appendix and get away with it. I suppose eventually they will do the anal probe on someone with clout and get reined in. Until then, smile, eat your teaspoonful of shit, and get on with your vacation.
About five years ago now, I had a conversation with a neighbor in my town who was a BP cop. He said he had always wanted to be a cop so when he grew up and became one he chose Border Patrol because the Constitution doesn’t apply, he doesn’t have to worry about warrants and ‘contaminated’ evidence, and that he ‘like going through people’s stuff’ with impunity.
So that’s the kind of people the BP attracts, bullies that know that you have NO rights.
My international traveling experience is limited, but my worst experiences of customs both here and abroad has been at the VT border. I remember having to explain to some mouth-breather why I went to Montreal for a business dinner while he looked at every page of my US passport like he had never seen one. “Why do you wanna do business with them?”, was one of the stupid questions he asked with disdain.
On another occasion a different clown wanted to know why I had traveled to the UK the year before.
Both times I was a white man wearing a suit. But I was driving a Beetle – uh oh. And I had a passport. Another uh oh, I bet. You know, only libruls travel out of the country.
The weak American dollar is a tourism draw for Quebecers. Having to run a gauntlet of angry ignorant assholes is not.
a defamation and/or slander suit here?