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Comment by decimalenough | Hacker News Reader

An understandable question, but as a Canadian flying to the US you will almost creatively complete US preclearance while still on Canadian soil, meaning you can get turned away but cannot be physically detained by ICE.

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"because rules" isn't valid in the context of the US right now.

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.

It's not rules, it's physics. The airport preclearance stations are on Canadian soil and don't contain US-operated jails, all the CBP can do is hand you over to Canadian police.

But once you're in the US, and then you eventually have to leave which means you see officials ... trust level 0 means trust level 0.

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.

ICE picking up people off the street is a thing that is now happening too.

And they've decided that "Collateral Arrests" are acceptable.

This really needs to be emphasized because of how absurd it is: Collateral arrests.

I know this is little comfort to foreign born or immigrants, but we actually have been doing that to our own citizens forever. We just expanded the practice to border enforcement so foreign born and immigrants are now being caught up in the practice.

They can detain you and have done that since the preclearance area is considered US soil.

It is not US soil, it is not an embassy. Actions there are governed by the Preclearance Act (which is reciprocal, btw, Canada has the right to open precleance facilities in the US - it just hasn't made sense due to the relative volume of flights).

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...

You're some rando on the internet, while the current American government is making a big show about ignoring the rule of law when it comes to deporting people. Nothing you say is going to reassure anybody. Hell, nothing anybody says is going to reassure anyone, from past presidents to the Speaker of the House to SCOTUS justices.

I'm not trying to reassure anyone. I'm explaining that US pre clearance is not US soil, it's Canadian soil, and what they can do there is very limited relative to what they can do in the US at actual US ports of entry. The "preclearance is US soil thing" is a common misunderstanding.

Why would you think the Trump regime would respect Canadian sovereignty in this case when he has literally threatened to annex the country?

Well, we don't. it's just nice that the American agents in the pre-clearance area are outnumbered and surrounded by Canadians.

Because it's only words. There have been no actions outside of punitive tariffs, which are legal. There's no indication that the "threats" are any thing more than words, given the lack of actual action.

Much like Trump's last term. He certainly said he would do a lot of things.

The punitive tariffs were a unilateral violation of an existing trade agreement.

... one which Trump himself negotiated and signed during his first term.

Indeed, and since it was approved by Congress I'm not sure how Trump has the legal authority to unilaterally violate it without congressional approval. (Not that such legal niceties actually matter, as we've all learned by now.)

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