A software engineer was detained for several hours by U.S. Customs | Hacker News Reader

A software engineer was detained for several hours by U.S. Customs

recode.net

62 pointspalidanx6 comments

Discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13741746

This reads like a The Onion article. I had to double check the URL to authenticate it is an actual article.

U.S. border patrol is getting more ridiculous by the day, but considering the ignoramus idiot at the top, it is not surprising. It's good that more and more horror stories are surfacing.

I mean, it's good that if there are horror stories, that they see the light of day. It's bad that there are more and more horror stories.

It's my understanding that border guards are trained to ask random questions and assess your body language while answering. The important thing isn't the question or the answer, but how you answer.

This is true, but the majority of the article isn't about that. His interview is essentially here:

> After a few minutes of grilling him about the job

Which it appears he fails, since the next part is him being detained:

> the border agent escorted Omin into a small room and told him to sit down. Another hour passed before a different customs officer came in.

Now, there's not enough here to say if he failed the interview due to his answers, his body language, or something else entirely, such as some prejudice of the border patrol agent. But the detainment is a bit ridiculous. Could I determine if a tree is balanced? Probably. With CBP breathing down my back and no sleep? I wouldn't bet on it.

> Omin tells me that the answers to the questions were technically correct, but he suspects the customs official interrogating him wasn’t technically trained and couldn’t understand his answers.

Now this I believe. And explaining your work to a layman under the stress of sleep deprivation and detainment? Good luck! I'd be lucky to explain binary trees to a layman on a good day. And, if a border patrol agent can vet his answers, he can make much more not being a border patrol agent.

As a US citizen (and thus unlikely to be denied entry), I'd write my answer in hex-represented bytes (representing arm instruction set). good luck :)

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