superrific
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Oh, that's a relief. In part on tattoos -- I mean, what country doesn't make decisions as to freedom or confinement based on tattoos?
Unsafe for foreigners (or well anyone) to travel to US catchall thread
- Thread starter altmin
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- Politics
superrific
Master of the ZZLverse
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There are no lines because there are increasingly no passengers
CRHeel94
Honored Member
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Not sure if I had posted this story before.
About ten years ago, some thieves broke into my car (ironically, it was parked right by the US Ambassador's residence). They took my backpack which unfortunately had my passport with US visa. Reported the lost items to the police and went about the process of getting a new passport and getting my visa re-issued. For the next 3-4 year, every time I traveled to the US I would get sent to what we Latin Americans know as El Cuartito (aka secondary screening). El Cuartito is different from airport to airport. In some places its a quick 5-10 minute process, very basic questions asked. The Boston cuartito had quite the interesting array of weird immigration cases (I would've sent some of those dudes back myself). The worst cuartito? Miami...by a mile. Overcrowded, all sorts of weird cases, always a long wait. Once I got sent with the entire family for about an hour (that was an exercise in parental creativity...no electronics allowed in el cuartito, my kids were hooked to their mini iPads.) The Miami cuartito is staffed by Cuban Americans who seem to relish rejecting other Latinos. Once, after waiting for more than an hour I made the mistake of asking the immigration official if my case was coming up...he asks my name, fishes out my passport..."Here it is" and proceeds to put it at the very bottom of the pile. I was there three hours.
Went to Miami about a month ago. After having not been sent to secondary for about 4 years, I was sent to el cuartito again. I will say, this time it was really empty (not a good sign for Florida tourism). Maybe three persons in the queue. One immigration guy was basically hitting on an English woman (she was an Amazon reseller that drifted from location to location). Took about twenty minutes and I was on my way.
About ten years ago, some thieves broke into my car (ironically, it was parked right by the US Ambassador's residence). They took my backpack which unfortunately had my passport with US visa. Reported the lost items to the police and went about the process of getting a new passport and getting my visa re-issued. For the next 3-4 year, every time I traveled to the US I would get sent to what we Latin Americans know as El Cuartito (aka secondary screening). El Cuartito is different from airport to airport. In some places its a quick 5-10 minute process, very basic questions asked. The Boston cuartito had quite the interesting array of weird immigration cases (I would've sent some of those dudes back myself). The worst cuartito? Miami...by a mile. Overcrowded, all sorts of weird cases, always a long wait. Once I got sent with the entire family for about an hour (that was an exercise in parental creativity...no electronics allowed in el cuartito, my kids were hooked to their mini iPads.) The Miami cuartito is staffed by Cuban Americans who seem to relish rejecting other Latinos. Once, after waiting for more than an hour I made the mistake of asking the immigration official if my case was coming up...he asks my name, fishes out my passport..."Here it is" and proceeds to put it at the very bottom of the pile. I was there three hours.
Went to Miami about a month ago. After having not been sent to secondary for about 4 years, I was sent to el cuartito again. I will say, this time it was really empty (not a good sign for Florida tourism). Maybe three persons in the queue. One immigration guy was basically hitting on an English woman (she was an Amazon reseller that drifted from location to location). Took about twenty minutes and I was on my way.
donbosco
Inconceivable Member
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I’ve been flying to Latin America for 40 years now (hard to believe) and I’ve been sent to the Guatemalan Cuartito once and the Colombian (Bogota) one once, both times during my first decade of travel. Been 30 years since I’ve been tapped — wondering if it might happen again all things considered.
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‘Treated like a criminal': US citizen says he was detained returning from Canada
Bachir Atallah, a real estate attorney from New Hampshire, says he and his wife, Jessica Fakhri, were stopped crossing from Canada into Vermont
www.nbcboston.com
A New Hampshire real estate attorney and American citizen returning home from Canada says he was detained at the border without an explanation.
Bachir Atallah and his wife, Jessica Fakhri, were traveling back from a quick family trip Sunday when they say U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped them when reentering the country in Vermont.
"I literally drove my car to Canada for the weekend, and on the way back, I was treated like a criminal," said Atallah, who has been a U.S. citizen for 10 years.
He recalled being forced from his car.
"He asked me, 'Exit the vehicle right now,' and he reached for his gun," he said. "I said, 'OK, I'm exiting the vehicle, keep your gun at your waist."
...
Atallah says CBP agents requested to look into his email on his phone, which he refused because of attorney client privilege.
"So I had to, under duress, give him permission to look through my email, through my priveleged information, and he made me write a statement, signed by me, saying that I gave him permission to look through the email," Atallah said.
After several requests, Atallah says CBP called his sister, who is an immigration attorney.
"It's not about the immigrants," Celine Atallah, Bachir's sister, told NBC10 Boston. "It's coming to us Americans, and it's going to go after all of us."
...
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They HAVE to let you in if you are an American (well for now at least). They can make your life hell though in the process. Also at anypoint they could just declare you get sent to El Salvador and fuck you then. (I have no faith that a Supreme Court ruling against it will stop them.) for now the best advice I can give is wipe your phone and laptop while re-entering the country and restore from a backup after you cross the border.
I am sure after enough people do that though you'll get detained for having a blank phone though.
I have to make one more trip back in June to get our cats from my mother in law, but then after that I might no go back into the US untill democracy is restored, which may be never. If it gets really bad before then, my mother in law will have two permanent pets i guess.
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Maybe bring burner phones instead of your personal devices? They are reserving the right to require you to let them review the contents of your phone (though as a practical matter they only have manpower to subject a fraction of arrivals to extended process).
I mean, who knows, given the discussions on this site, you might not want a zealous official to see that you are registered here?
4thgenheel
Iconic Member
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jesus h christ.
i don't access this site on my phone. i also don't have social media on my phone any more. any ideas on anything else that might catch the attention of these assholes?
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anything anti Trump, pro Palestine
Mulberry Heel
Inconceivable Member
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Pretty much. Frankly, I sometimes wonder how safe it is to be posting on message boards like these. If this all goes as far as many of us fear it will, then what's to stop Trumpers from either shutting down boards like these or actually finding out the real names and addresses of the posters here and on other politics-related message boards and social media sites? It's a chilling thought, but I'm surprised that it doesn't get discussed more often.
4thgenheel
Iconic Member
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i probably have, like, some screenshots of some funny trump memes. that's probably it.
could those seriously cause trouble for me? that is so fucking illegal and unconstitutional.
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Like I said right now they HAVE to let you in if you are a citizen, but that is assuming they continue to follow the laws of the land. Also they could make you sit there for hours to days before they let you in....
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I have a good friend (who happens to do immigration legal work) who has a SIL who is a British citizen of Pakistani descent but resides in the US as a permanent resident. She was recently out of the country for a while, having left prior to all this mess going down, and he advised her to mail her real phone back to the US and purchase a burner phone before traveling back here.
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Right now green card holders with no crimes are beign loaded into unlabeled cars by men wearing masks. It's not too far off to believe that it can/will happen to citizens. I mean I am the equivalent of a green card holder in Canada. If the mounties started doing that, I would be freaking the fuck out.
whatntarnation
Exceptional Member
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I flew from Montreal (Trudeau ) to Charlotte last September. Landed and walked straight out with no customs. Only showed my passport to one guy in a booth at Trudeau. Is that different now?