Reply to post: Re: As a non citizen..Nothing new. Its always been that way. Everywhere

Re: As a non citizen..Nothing new. Its always been that way. Everywhere

Yeah, US border patrol sucks but back in the 1980's and 1990's it was lot more easy going. I wonder what happened since then? Your friend fitted the profile so he was going to get more attention. End of story. A lot of those salifis doing the bad stuff were professionally qualified clean cut males of middle eastern origin. The fact the situation seems to have ruffled your professional amour propre is neither here not there.

Back in the 1970's or 1980's if you had been a young working class Irish male who looked "wrong" while getting off the ferry in Hollyhead in Wales or Stranraer in Scotland you would have had a very long talk with the HM Customs and some of their plain clothes associates. Or how about dressing like a scruffy student with a small pack trying to cross the French, German or Italian border back at the height of the Baader Meinhof / Red Brigade terrorism. If you did not have all your national papers in order , or even if they were and they did not like the look of you, then it was 24 hours of "investigation" for you. In their very cozy holding cells.

The rule has always been when dealing with *any* border police is that you have *no* rights in that moment you are interacting with them. In their zone. In theory you might have certain rights but in reality what they decide to do is what the law actually is. If they decided to be dickheads then thats whats going to happen. Want to complain? Just makes things a lot worse. Complain afterwards? The authorities will always back the Border Police. Always. Up to and including manslaughter. I can think of cases in both Germany and France back in the 1980's where this happened. Not just in the DDR. West Germany too.

If the border police decide to take an interest in you while crossing a border it is best to always treat the situation as a hostage negation situation. Your only goal is to get out of the situation as quickly and cleanly as possible. No matter how much your feathers might be ruffled. Or how much indignation you might feel. You will always lose otherwise. So just not worth it.