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Comment by nojvek | Hacker News Reader

I can imagine that. I am a permanent resident of US but for the fact that I am brown, I am avoiding all unnecessary trips.

Going through TSA is a very uncomfortable experience.

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I have a friend who was born in the US but his parents are Iranian. I am friends with him since we were 5 years old. This guy is the opposite of a threat to this country, but he's pretty much stopped traveling internationally after he was detained and accused of bringing rocket launchers into the country by some stupid border agent who ended up just trying to be "tough" on him to see if he would crack.

What did the border agent think were rocket launchers?

Not trying to berate your experience. Touchwood, I never had any problem with TSA. I have got myself TSA pre. My total time for security check at O'hare and LAX is between 2-5 mins. There have been times when TSA officials were cracking jokes with me.

Edit - let me share a small story with you. It is from the times when I was on EAD (about 4,5 years ago). I was returning from India to Chicago. Immigration office told me there will an additional check so they asked me to follow another officer. The area had lot of chairs and TVs. While, I was waiting for my return of my passport, I saw another guy sleeping on 5,6 chairs. A TSA officer came and telling him while shaking his body to try to wake him up - "hey! wake up. You can go home" :-)

P.S - english is my 2nd language so please pardon my grammar.

Same here. I am brown, US passport, have never had any problems reentering the US. One time I even had a full on beard, and looked very disheveled and disoriented. Ambled on in.

TSA Pre can help, but if you have a similar name to someone on a watchlist or no-fly list you can still get stopped.

If anyone reading this is consistently stopped unfairly, or faces extra delays when ticket agents print their boarding card, you should use DHS TRIP (Traveler Redress Inquiry Program)

https://www.dhs.gov/dhs-trip

Even a redress number is no guarantee against TSA harassment at the border, although that's not a new thing. On The Media had an episode featuring the story of one of its producers' experience at the US-Canadian border in 2013, during which a group of US citizens were held without cause other than the fact that they were Muslim.[1] One of them had a redress number, but the CBP agent told him that it didn't matter and wouldn't help.

[1]: http://www.wnyc.org/story/my-detainment-story-or-how-i-learn...

Fake news from a right-wing propagandist. Discrimination at the border did not exist before Jan 20 2017.

I've travelled to the US 20+ times over the past two years; I really don't mind going through TSA or US Customs, I have an Arabic first name and I'm a visible minority (Indian). Never had any major issues at the border or during security.

That being said, I cancelled a couple planned trips since January — not going to travel to the US until I have to; I don't want to put up with the hassle.

Brown like Indian or Brown like Arabic? Does it even make a difference?

This is a common misconception - "Arabic" isn't distinguishable like this since a lot of Arabs are fair-skinned.

Given how many Americans assume Sikhs are Muslims (see https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/the-tro...), I'd say probably not.

As you probably know, the vast majority of Indians are not Sikh, and it's not clear that they assume Indians of other religions are Muslim as well.

Yes they do assume Indians of other religions are Muslim as well. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39081698

I was hoping for more widespread data rather than a single incident. I have definitely heard about more incidents involving Sikh individuals.

> I have definitely heard about more incidents involving Sikh individuals.

Most likely because all the aggressors in those incidents see is the traditional dastar.

Remember that one of the more prevalent slurs for men from Muslim cultures is "raghead." If you're already enough of a shit to think that's a legitimate way to treat people, you probably don't care one whit about the cultural specifics of the "rag" in question.

Decidedly anecdotal: Not the OP but I am brown like Indian with a non-Muslim name and have never had any extra scrutiny at security, except for one "random" screening on my boarding pass that involved some TSA swab check. I am a citizen, but I haven't heard of any non-citizen family friends or relatives that have expressed anything out of the ordinary.

and have never had any extra scrutiny at security, except for one "random" screening on my boarding pass that involved some TSA swab check.

Interesting. I'm a white guy and I've gone through secondary screening (swabs, detailed questions, etc) probably half a dozen times over the past 2-3 years.

And I have a US passport!

I've also been subject to secondary screening a lot more often than the GP, and am a white, native-born US citizen with a germanic surname.

Discretionary secondary screenings can have a lot to do with appearing nonthreatening. If the guard has a quota to hit (even an unstated one) and wants to minimize effort spent on dumb secondary screenings, it pays to choose people who won't put up a struggle.

White American here. In the past 3-4 years (probably a couple dozen flights) I have gotten some level of patdowns and hand-swabs literally every single time I go through one of those millimeter-wave machines. Every time, without fail.

My belief is that it's because I had gone through some pretty substantial weight loss in the past, and so my body skin/muscle/fat density is all screwy around the midsection, and thus it sets the machine off.

My white buddy got stopped and frisked traveling around Europe with me every time. He has a legit beard. They even asked if they could put their hands inside his pants (inside the waist band). Beards are suspect these days no matter what your background.

perhaps they profiled too many brown people and had to make their numbers look 'random' again (:

I'm possibly the most incompetent traveler ever, and I haven't yet been pulled aside for extra scrutiny. But my mum has, and she's far more careful than I am with all her documents.

If there's one thing I've learned from attempting to replicate bugs, it's that if something affects even as much as one in four people, it'll look hunky dory to thrice as many people as it looks awful to.

> ...anything out of the ordinary.

I'm Canadian. White. Blonde. I'm often mistaken for a soldier. After possibly hundreds of trips in and out of the US spanning four decades, last month the guy at YVR asked me "what religion are you?" That was strange. I didn't have a ready answer and I'm someone who always has a ready answer for boarder guards. I actually said "Well, when my grandfather died we had a ceremony at a church. Is that enough?"

Have you ever been arrested? No. Have you ever been finger printed? Yes. Have you ever been to the middle east? Yes. Are you carrying food? No. What religion are you? .... wtf did that become a thing?

Officer watched too much homeland?

That's only slightly funny. In the dark days of GWB (2002-2007) I saw many interviews where interrogators, from boarder guards to military people, said they took guidance from popular TV shows. The breakdown in mid-level management, a lack of clear standards and procedures, meant that otherwise rational people felt it appropriate to take ideas from TV. The writers of 24 were visibly upset when confronted with evidence that intel people took "interrogation" ideas from their show.

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