A) I'm not the right skin color.
B) DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection are evil.
-or-
C) I work for a group that has been classified as an eco-terrorist organization. And due to past terrorist events my org was involved in, they want to find out what I'm doing here.
Doesn't C) explain this so much better than A) and B)?
But then there wouldn't be a story here to report on.
edit: I keep thinking about that, and I don't know how you don't become crazy when you discover that the four or fifth biggest economy (at the time) actively attacked you. A "sane" level of paranoia doesn't exists anymore, you are actually framed by the secret services, you are in the novel, in the movie. They have allies all over the world, the rest is USSR friends you don't trust either or non-aligned third world countries.
France threatened to embargo NZ goods within the EU unless we handed back their terrorists. At which point they were released and promoted.
And the problem the law has with it is not due to it's ends, but with it's means.
It can be argued that eco-activism hurts “the economy”. But that argument goes both ways: Some practices like whaling, mining, fracking and deforestation do (or can do) massive ecologic damage, and are not sustainable.
On his blog, Mr. Eaton mentioned the possibility that he may be subject to such intimidation precisely because of the inability to connect him with illegal activities (http://chriseatondotnet.tumblr.com/post/59902438104/freedom).
This is what is wrong with the label terrorist - it mixes up people happy to shoot at crowds and bomb markets with all sorts of other people the government finds threatening. The aim of its use is to label people as beyond the pale and therefore not worthy of the protection of our laws. We should be very wary when this label is used.
That these powers have been abused for detaining and searching members of greenpeace, or film makers like Poitras, is a very persuasive argument for me that the government should not have these powers of arbitrary arrest or detention at all.
*surprising that they don't give a real number.