Completely understandable. Why would I, as a Canadian who sees stories coming from the US of fellow citizens getting hoovered up into the bowels of ICE from border crossings, want to go to the US when I have a choice not to?
[1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-19.32/FullText.ht...
[edit] There's also pre-clearance facilities at Dublin and Shannon in Ireland, and sprinkled around the Caribbean. Abu Dhabi has one but visiting Emirati jail is not top of my to-do list.
I presume that you allude to a vacuuming kind of process of your details, but rather apt now that the US has entered a new Hoover age.
Trump has made a point of not caring about stuff like that, so who really knows?
[edit] Ah, I see, I didn't catch that you meant on arrival. I suppose that is a risk, but it does seem like you'd really have to make someone's shit list to be admitted only to then immediately be removed.
I do not need thugs at the border to give me a hard time because they feel empowered to do whatever they want. My non-white (but Americans born) partner is even more concerned. Sure, they have to let you back into the country, but they can make it painful.
I flew back in from Costa Rica to ATL and went through customs. Nothing has changed.
I’m flying into BUF in July and taking a cab to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and back. We will see what happens.
Sure. And lose your day to being held for fuck all. Like I hear you, and I absolutely have the vindictive streak that would drive me to do this under the right circumstances. But you should be prepared to be detained, harassed, all while maintaining your cool and collecting detailed mental notes for follow through with a lawsuit.
I’ve honestly been a dick twice through immigration, once accidentally and once a bit more purposely. I haven’t seen any evidence of this pattern of retribution. Like, civil-rights activists exist and aren’t constantly held up at the border.
If you’re planning on pulling a stunt like this, a better plan is to have someone on the outside who will call your lawyer. Or better yet, tell your lawyer what you’re doing so they can call you.
Refusing to be searched at the border.
Unless you have friends, family or empathy.
And if there's no due process for non-citizens, there's no due process for citizens either. That congress is allowing this to happen is deeply, deeply fucked.
If they can put people onto an airplane and fly them to a Salvadoran gulag in the middle of recess in a court case about how they can't do that - and then laugh about it - the law is very clearly not a limit they care about.
I have doubts that waving your passport or your service medals in their face will at the end of the day, prove very convincing either.
one of the failings behind their unprofessionalism is that the civil case treatment doesnt afford the same protections and right to legal counsel as a criminal case
is this one of those things you need a source for, or can you listen to the concerns of other people and find the source yourself
Or you could be a birthright citizen in which case you can be detained just to be the test subject in the supreme court case.
In summary no one is safe except Trump at this point.
The faith, respect and trust of the US to follow its own rules is utterly destroyed.
It's really hard to overstate that the trust level is now a hard zero and it's likely staying there for decades.
Let's put this another way as an extreme. If this relationship existed for somewhere like Myanmar, Yemen or Turkmenistan it doesn't mean you can trust your safety once you're in the country.
Many Americans refuse to travel to Mexico on this premise. This is what I'm talking about. The US is now on that list.
They can only detain you until they hand you over to the Canadian police. [1]
Section (2) clearly states...
> (2) A preclearance officer is not permitted to exercise any powers of questioning or interrogation, examination, search, seizure, forfeiture, detention or arrest that are conferred under the laws of the United States.
[1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-19.32/FullText.ht...
Much like Trump's last term. He certainly said he would do a lot of things.
I live in a border down. There are two border crossings here. I recently had something shipped to me using UPS as the courier. I did not engage the shipping. I did not pay for it. It was something that someone owed me, and they made these arrangements entirely themselves without my involvement or input.
UPS nonetheless wanted to charge me around $100 for "customs brokerage fees." I told them no way and that I would self-clear.
I had never self-cleared a package before, so I was in very new territory. But I was highly driven by my desire to not give UPS one penny of what I felt was a ransom demand (they were holding my property hostage unless I agreed to pay them money for services I did not solicit).
In order to self-clear, you just have to take a slip of paper that UPS gives you to your local CBSA office (Canadian Border Security Agency). The offices for these places in my city are at the border crossing.
I took a wrong turn, because I had no idea where I was going, only to find myself crossing over to the USA with no ability to turn around because it's one-way.
I did not have my passport with me!
The US border patrol officers were extremely nice. They assured me that it happens all the time. They had to pull me in and did search my vehicle but I was sitting in immigration for all of 20 minutes waiting for them to do some paperwork. As soon as they found out that I hold a valid passport, I just didn't have it on me, they gave me a visitor's visa and sent me on my way.
This was a week ago.
So yeah ... we hear horror stories. The news is alarming. And one single anecdotal data point does not statistics make.
I just want to offer a counter example to the horror stories because the news cycle loves to get people freaked out. That's their job.