The Joy Of Being Detained By U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Spent 7 hours there once, waiting forever to do a simple business visa. Missed my flight and the next two.

I hope it's improved since then. What I remember is this: A Japanese family was coming through. He was a company transfer of some kind, and had a cubic foot of paperwork with him. His English skills were minimal. I watched an agent harangue them for the better part of an hour about the state of their paperwork (which had clearly been prepared by a law firm that knew what they were doing, because everything they looked for was there, but screaming "where is it" at the hapless Japanese dude wasn't producing the precise document they wanted -- only looking at the cross-referenced tabs in the doc set would do that.

Abruptly the verbal tirade stopped, and the "officer" blasted off in a huff, a sheaf of papers in her hand. 45 minutes later she returned, and yelled: "You SEE what you made me DO!!! Do you SEE this? There are supposed to be FOUR copies of this. FOUR!! You have THREE!! You're lucky I went back and copied this myself. If you EVER show up with paperwork like this again, I'll PUT YOU BACK ON A PLANE."

Yeah.

I said absolutely nothing after that. No complaining, no sir.

I expected a story of being made to wait for hours on end and maybe receiving an unreasonable interrogation. Not just a story of being sent to secondary and made to wait 30 minutes before someone would see you (and a 7 month old story at that).

That just seems par for the course for a busy airport, and maybe you should turn up more than an hour before your flight time if you're traveling internationally and have to go through the preclearance process like they do in Canadian airports.

Site didn't load for me...

http://web.archive.org/web/20130822142217/http://www.feld.co...

The behavior of US CBP seems reasonable to me. The traveller gave an incorrect address and so they sent him to the secondary inspection to clarify things. Better than slowing down the whole queue of people waiting for primary inspection. And the 30 minutes waiting time for secondary inspection also doesn't sound bad. If a 30 minute delay makes you miss your flight, you've been late already anyway.

Coral cache: http://www.feld.com.nyud.net/wp/archives/2013/03/the-joy-of-...

The Joy Of Being Unable To View The Link Because It Is Down.

Might there be a mirror somewhere?

Overreaction.