by coolsank on 10/9/13, 8:41 AM with 170 comments
by adventured on 10/9/13, 10:45 AM
If I could give one piece of advice to foreigners for the next 20 or 30 years as it relates to America: stay out, we are not free here, the walls - both digital and physical - are going up to control us. The police state is becoming more aggressive, violent, and omnipresent. Save yourselves, pursue freedom and happiness, you won't find such here any longer. There are better countries for that future.
I think this should be etched into the Statue of Liberty as a warning. Since it doesn't represent a beacon of liberty any longer, it might as well serve a purpose.
by davidw on 10/9/13, 12:19 PM
However: does it really belong on HN? It's not germane to the stated topics of the site. And it is not "gratifying one's intellectual curiosity" - quite the opposite, it's a story that makes you mad without really telling you anything you didn't know already.
by tokenadult on 10/9/13, 12:19 PM
All that is reported here sounds like an aberration, an officer who mistook the situation and abused his authority. For context, the United States continues to be second only to France as a destination for international tourist visits,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings
and just last week my wife and I enjoyed a meet-up in another part of the United States with several of her high school classmates from back when she lived in Taiwan, who arrived from Taiwan, Malaysia, and China, all without incident. When peaceful, hassle-free visits number in the millions per year, a few visits that are abuses of the process will certainly make news, but they don't appear to discourage tourism to the United States over the long haul.
by Amadou on 10/9/13, 10:46 AM
This sort of thing is the inevitable result of giving people responsibility without accountability.
by pkrefta on 10/9/13, 11:56 AM
by Tepix on 10/9/13, 12:04 PM
by auggierose on 10/9/13, 1:24 PM
The US is the most barbaric and uncivilised of the western countries. That might come as a surprise to some.
by sneak on 10/9/13, 11:26 AM
...all because I politely exercise my fifth amendment rights.
This happens about 50% of the time I enter the country. I live abroad so I enter the US about a half-dozen times per year. I think my file is big enough now that they know not to ask me anything.
http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/customerservice/pledge_tra...
> CBP’s Pledge to Travelers
> We pledge to cordially greet and welcome you to the United States.
> We pledge to treat you with courtesy, dignity, and respect.
> We pledge to explain the CBP process to you.
> We pledge to have a supervisor listen to your comments.
> We pledge to accept and respond to your comments in written, verbal, or electronic form.
> We pledge to provide reasonable assistance due to delay or disability.
I often wonder which of these "threatening me with prosecution for interfering with a border control point", "lying to me by saying I'm legally required to answer their questions", "refusing to tell me the name of the city I'm standing in" and "throwing me out of the border control point (into the USA) on the highway in Vermont in February in a snowstorm" fall under.
(It's the only time I've ever had to hitchhike in my life, as it'd been hours since they'd sent the Montreal-Boston bus on without me.)
The one border cop in Detroit told me, after coming through the tunnel from Windsor, that "[she's] just doing her job, making sure the country is safe, and that [she's] there to prove [I'm] innocent and get [me] on my way quickly." I waited until I was given the all clear to leave the building before mentioning to her that "We're Americans, and this is America. I am innocent until I am proven guilty, and those representing our country would do best to remember that."
Despite my opinions about the lot of them, I am calm, polite, professional, and courteous in my interactions with them. They respond in the most unprofessional manner possible, short of physically assaulting me. They've cost me thousands of dollars and caused me to miss important business meetings. (Before you say it: it's not my fault for exercising my basic rights or not "just answering the simple questions" that I missed my meetings. I'd have left except for the fact that men with guns on their belt arrested me after I'd already given them my passport and they'd searched my possessions.)
Fuck the police.
PS: Their invasive searches of my belongings were clearly punitive, too. I never travel with contraband but had I been doing so, they would not have found any of it. They were clearly just fucking with someone who had the nerve to tell them that his travel plans inside and outside of the US were and are "none of their business".
by willvarfar on 10/9/13, 1:09 PM
by jmilloy on 10/9/13, 2:09 PM
But to those of you complaining, are you sure this isn't just another anecdote that supports your stereotypes? Or is our anti-authoritarian fetish getting in the way of the data (or lack there of) again?
Have any of us worked with a effective and practical system that never has false positives? Are you unhappy with the rate of false positives? Do you even know what that rate is? Are you saying you would you rather have more false negatives and fewer false positives? Surely anecdotal evidence is biased towards nasty false positives: we don't read about stories when someone triggers suspicion and is reasonably investigate before being released, but are you sure it never happens?
I'm not saying that I think it's acceptable to be wrong sometimes, or to treat people this way. But I'm also not convinced by anyone who doesn't have answers to the above questions.
by nailer on 10/9/13, 12:33 PM
What is a 'TNT'?
by ctdonath on 10/9/13, 2:23 PM
I've seen the same up close. Seems it's a standard tactic: when someone is suspected of immigration transgression, lie about the suspect's prior statements to others; reason is to throw the person off-guard, increasing the chance they'll say something actionable. This is very effective, and VERY disturbing to the suspect. The guards are under no obligation to tell the truth, and use lying as a standard tactic...but anything YOU say can and will be used against you, with lying to a federal official being one of the worst things you can do.
by kubiiii on 10/9/13, 12:21 PM
by conformal on 10/9/13, 1:13 PM
unfortunately, the characterization of people in the US being (1) ignorant, (2) rude and (3) obnoxious is rather accurate. the USG should make an effort to have competent people manning the border since it makes the US look _awful_ when stuff like this happens. obama, or whoever is president, should make this shit a priority since we look like a bunch of fucking jerks when it comes to CBP/ICE.
by mahranch on 10/9/13, 1:12 PM
Stories like this are beyond useless because they don't present all the facts. It's a sensationalist one-sided narrative of what happened. Without the other side's version of events, we cannot look at the story critically and evaluate the merits of both sides.
by bonemachine on 10/9/13, 4:16 PM
The immigration officer then returned to the room and accused Grande of being a liar. He claimed that he talked to her aunt, who allegedly told him that Grande will take care of her as a caregiver.
She said the immigration officer's allegations are not true because her aunt didn't even know she was arriving in the US.
"While Officer Mam kept on repeating his questions about why I was in the US, a fellow officer by the name of Chang, joined and shouted, calling me a liar. He even searched my purse where I had wedding cards (with money) for my daughter and future son-in-law, and a birthday card for Joshua (also with money) and other stuff. He scattered all the items in my purse on the table, asking why they should believe me, when my aunt, according to him, seems to be the honest one," Grande said.
by vixen99 on 10/9/13, 12:00 PM
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-eborders-s...
by JackFr on 10/9/13, 1:58 PM
I think it would be prudent to reserve judgement until more information is available.
by pinaceae on 10/9/13, 2:05 PM
i am deeply skeptical about this account. this year alone i have entered the US about 10 times, coming from European and Asian destinations. not a US citizen. I have never witnessed any impolite behavior by CBP personnel towards passengers - and I was standing in the blue line for hours with them.
using the very specific term TNT is very strange for non-filipino officers.
if you worked in retail this reminds me of certain customers from hell that complained to your manager and told a story that was outrageously one sided. all the while having been openly abusive to you.
by rajeemcariazo on 10/9/13, 10:45 AM
by eyeareque on 10/9/13, 1:14 PM
I don't think it seems that far fetched, but it does come across as being a fake story. It sadly doesn't surprise me that something like this could happen, I just question the site this is hosted on.