
Pinay traumatized by horror trip to US - coolsank
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/10/07/13/pinay-traumalized-horror-trip-us
======
adventured
Stories like this seem to get worse as the years go by post 9/11.

If I could give one piece of advice to foreigners for the next 20 or 30 years
as it relates to America: stay out, we are not free here, the walls - both
digital and physical - are going up to control us. The police state is
becoming more aggressive, violent, and omnipresent. Save yourselves, pursue
freedom and happiness, you won't find such here any longer. There are better
countries for that future.

I think this should be etched into the Statue of Liberty as a warning. Since
it doesn't represent a beacon of liberty any longer, it might as well serve a
purpose.

~~~
peterjancelis
What I remember from my visit to NYC in 2008 is that all tourist attractions
had one police check point (metallic / bomb detectors) and the statue of
liberty had it two times.

I found it quite ironic.

Edit: Another funny experience was me being stopped by security guards when I
tried to take a picture of the Federal Reserve building when standing in front
of it, only to be handed a brochure with on the cover a picture of pretty much
the same angle.

~~~
codfrantic
I remember walking past the US Embassy in Geneva, there is one location,
clearly marked in front of the building from where you are allowed to take a
picture. I didn't bother...

~~~
noarchy
The US Embassy in Ottawa, Canada, looks like a fortress downtown. Adjacent to
the building, one lane of a busy street has been closed by concrete barriers
for years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_Ottawa)

------
davidw
Outrageous. Really, it is - as an American, I'm ashamed to read stuff like
this.

However: does it really belong on HN? It's not germane to the stated topics of
the site. And it is not "gratifying one's intellectual curiosity" \- quite the
opposite, it's a story that makes you mad without really telling you anything
you didn't know already.

~~~
Udo
Well, it's an extreme form of what many of us go through on a regular basis
when trying to travel to the US, hence I'd say it's relevant. By allowing
these people to reign freely, the US is sabotaging itself in the long run, but
in the short run it's just incredibly annoying, threatening, and expensive.

I'm also in favor of keeping these stories coming, this should not ever be
seen as normal or inevitable.

~~~
davidw
> I'm also in favor of keeping these stories coming, this should not ever be
> seen as normal or inevitable.

Perhaps people could post them _elsewhere_. This site does not need to be the
be-all and end-all of one's online news consumption, you know?

~~~
theklub
I don't think the site should be flooded with these types of stories but there
are also few places on the web to get intelligent conversation on such topics.

~~~
davidw
Do you think that the discussion for this article is interesting and
intelligent?

~~~
twoodfin
The top voted comment at the moment ends with "Fuck the Police", so it's about
at the hn par for this topic.

------
tokenadult
The article reports, "It was her 13th time to visit the US in a span of more
than two and a half decades."

All that is reported here sounds like an aberration, an officer who mistook
the situation and abused his authority. For context, the United States
continues to be second only to France as a destination for international
tourist visits,

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings)

and just last week my wife and I enjoyed a meet-up in another part of the
United States with several of her high school classmates from back when she
lived in Taiwan, who arrived from Taiwan, Malaysia, and China, all without
incident. When peaceful, hassle-free visits number in the millions per year, a
few visits that are abuses of the process will certainly make news, but they
don't appear to discourage tourism to the United States over the long haul.

~~~
kalleboo
> For context, the United States continues to be second only to France as a
> destination for international tourist visits

France is also a way smaller country than the US. If these numbers are correct
and you bundled together the whole Schengen area instead (as it has a common
border), it would massively dwarf the US.

~~~
rtkwe
Making comparisons like that is largely useless though because there's a
thousand other adjustments you could make; visitor vs depth of history,
visitors vs density, etc.

~~~
Dewie
I don't think it is useless. It is pretty common to use relative rather than
absolute numbers: population density rather than population, GDP per capita
rather than just GDP... When it comes to GDP, GDP per capita says more about
how affluent a country is compared to other countries than just the GDP. And
in the same way that a larger contry tends to have a larger economy, a country
that is larger in size and in population is more likely to have more visitors
than the same country with less size and less population.

Besides: things like history is likely to be what is often used to _explain_
the large amounts of tourists that coutnries like France gets, in the first
place, while the population variable is left hidden.

------
Amadou
Ho hum. Just another day in the War on Dignity.

This sort of thing is the inevitable result of giving people responsibility
without accountability.

------
pkrefta
Things like this really scary me, as a simple startup guy who wants to visit
SV some day. I'm reading stories like this more often unfortunately and I'm
starting to think if I really want to go to US. Getting a visa in Poland is
also not very comfortable process since you've to give all information about
your life to US authorities and still I've no guarantee that I'll be able to
enter US.

~~~
rainsford
Just be careful about drawing too broad a conclusion from stories like this.
They're certainly bad events and the effort should be to make sure they never
happen. But they are the only stories about entering the US that get reported
on because they're news...and the uneventful instances are not. This is
particularly true if you get your news from an aggregation site like HN where
there is a certain level of interest in these stories and so they're even more
likely to be reported on here.

Millions of people travel to and within the US every year without incident,
what gets reported is the admittedly terrible sounding times when that's not
the case. Chances are very good that you'd have no problems.

~~~
nraynaud
The problem is that these are low probability high impact situation, you want
0 occurrences.

I mean wen we get to the US, we have our flight ticket info sent prior, we
have to add more data because it's the US, the ESTA, last time I got harassed
in Paris by the American Airline because I _need_ to know the address I'm
going to (I told her to check my file, I don't remember it), how long I knew
my girlfriend and stuff, the NSA knows everything about me (I'm not an US
citizen), the TSA checked me, the border police checked me out of the country.
When I arrive in front of the CBP agent, my privacy had already been
thoroughly shredded in the name of security, and my personal data including
credit card is gone in the wild without any recourse or oversight, there is
absolutely no need to physically harass people at the border.

~~~
conformal
totally agree here. avoiding these pointless high-impact incidents is
paramount to PR for the US as a travel destination.

it is a win for both the US and travelers when this process goes smoothly.

------
Tepix
This happens all the time, and it's a disgrace. It's also the reason why I
haven't visited the US for more than a decade. The last time I went through
this was before 9/11 and I can only assume it has gotten even worse since
then.

~~~
DrJokepu
Meh. I visit America relatively frequently and I can't remember the last time
I spent longer than 60 seconds at the US Border Control (excluding the queue
which can be a bit long sometimes). And you know, the border control officers
were always very polite and professional with me. This is a silly reason to
not visit America.

~~~
gadders
Me too. Never had an unfriendly one yet.

~~~
pantalaimon
Maybe you are just white enough.

~~~
gadders
I am a British honky, that is true. But I also don't give them any attitude.

------
auggierose
Well. I actually do like America, I mean, which programmer would not? But
during my various stays there, people have been murdered in front of my house,
naked people have been thrown out of cars onto the pavement in front of me,
bank roberies happened right across the street of me.

The US is the most barbaric and uncivilised of the western countries. That
might come as a surprise to some.

~~~
joonix
Okay. I am born and raised in the US and have lived here all my life. Not only
have I never seen anything you described, I can't really think of a time I've
even witnessed anything particularly bad happen or even had "bad things"
happen to me. Not a car broken into, not a home, not luggage, no murders, not
even a scream! And I'm dark and look Middle Eastern but have never faced
racism (grew up in the whitest parts of the south/southwest) or even a police
officer who was anything but polite. For a few months, I lived in one of the
adored "utopian paradises" frequently praised on the internet, and was
"randomly selected" for a bag search every single time I flew domestically.

Yes, I guess I'm fortunate, and I'm sorry bad things happened to you, and
there are plenty of problems here, but, there are 330 million people in this
country, most were either born abroad or their parents or grandparents were,
and we all get along pretty fucking well.

------
sneak
They do this to me regularly, and I'm a US-born US citizen. My median time for
being arrested and held with no food or water or use of a communications
device is around six hours.

...all because I politely exercise my fifth amendment rights.

This happens about 50% of the time I enter the country. I live abroad so I
enter the US about a half-dozen times per year. I think my file is big enough
now that they know not to ask me anything.

[http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/customerservice/pledge_tra...](http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/customerservice/pledge_travel.xml)

> CBP’s Pledge to Travelers

> We pledge to cordially greet and welcome you to the United States.

> We pledge to treat you with courtesy, dignity, and respect.

> We pledge to explain the CBP process to you.

> We pledge to have a supervisor listen to your comments.

> We pledge to accept and respond to your comments in written, verbal, or
> electronic form.

> We pledge to provide reasonable assistance due to delay or disability.

I often wonder which of these "threatening me with prosecution for interfering
with a border control point", "lying to me by saying I'm legally required to
answer their questions", "refusing to tell me the name of the city I'm
standing in" and "throwing me out of the border control point (into the USA)
on the highway in Vermont in February in a snowstorm" fall under.

(It's the only time I've ever had to hitchhike in my life, as it'd been hours
since they'd sent the Montreal-Boston bus on without me.)

The one border cop in Detroit told me, after coming through the tunnel from
Windsor, that "[she's] just doing her job, making sure the country is safe,
and that [she's] there to _prove [I 'm] innocent_ and get [me] on my way
quickly." I waited until I was given the all clear to leave the building
before mentioning to her that "We're Americans, and this is America. I am
innocent until I am proven guilty, and those representing our country would do
best to remember that."

Despite my opinions about the lot of them, I am calm, polite, professional,
and courteous in my interactions with them. They respond in the most
unprofessional manner possible, short of physically assaulting me. They've
cost me thousands of dollars and caused me to miss important business
meetings. (Before you say it: it's not my fault for exercising my basic rights
or not "just answering the simple questions" that I missed my meetings. I'd
have left except for the fact that men with guns on their belt arrested me
after I'd already given them my passport and they'd searched my possessions.)

Fuck the police.

PS: Their invasive searches of my belongings were clearly punitive, too. I
never travel with contraband but had I been doing so, they would not have
found any of it. They were clearly just fucking with someone who had the nerve
to tell them that his travel plans inside and outside of the US were and are
"none of their business".

~~~
rayiner
What fifth amendment rights? Was someone asking you to testify against
yourself at trial?

And CBP does have the right to ask who you are and where you're going when you
cross the border. It is their business, and has been since the 18th century.

EDIT: I should clarify because I'm being somewhat glib. First, 4th amendment
does not apply to routine border searches, and it was the First Congress,
containing many of the framers, that instituted routine border searches:
[http://blog.cybersecuritylaw.us/2013/09/23/david-house-
dhs-a...](http://blog.cybersecuritylaw.us/2013/09/23/david-house-dhs-and-the-
fourth-amendment-border-search-exception).

Second, while the Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue, the various
circuits have held that 5th amendment does apply, but Miranda warnings are not
required:
[http://fourthamendment.com/blog/index.php?blog=1&title=e_d_n...](http://fourthamendment.com/blog/index.php?blog=1&title=e_d_n_y_miranda_warnings_not_required_fo&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1).

These are both rooted in the long-standing right of sovereign entities to
defend their borders.

Third, I'm not aware of any Supreme Court case that says you can't be
compelled to answer questions at the border. Currently, there is simply no law
compelling you to answer questions, but it's not clear such a law would be
unconstitutional if it existed. So there is nothing wrong with CBP asking, and
nothing wrong with you refusing to answer, and nothing wrong with CBP giving
you extra scrutiny, within the limits of the 4th amendment, for refusing to
answer the questions.

Fourth, I'm in the camp that thinks Miranda shouldn't even apply to
questioning at the border. See: [http://www.volokh.com/2013/06/17/do-you-have-
a-right-to-rema...](http://www.volokh.com/2013/06/17/do-you-have-a-right-to-
remain-silent-thoughts-on-the-sleeper-criminal-procedure-case-of-the-term-
salinas-v-texas). The 5th amendment's text is simple: "No person... shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The
historical practice and plain meaning of this text was, before the 1960's,
that you couldn't force a defendant to testify against himself in a criminal
proceeding. This was a specific response to the practice of the Star Chamber
in England. It's a pretty big stretch to say that this should limit the
police's ability to ask you questions, especially at the border where the
state's interest in security is relatively stronger.

~~~
sneak
Fifth amendment rights extend beyond the courtroom. I am not legally obligated
to make any statements to law enforcement about my own activities. Indeed,
border control points are simply yet another instance in which you should
"never talk to the police."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

You're being recorded, both audio and video, from the moment you enter the
building. Making a false statement, even accidentally, is a serious crime.
They, of course, are allowed to lie as much as they wish with no
repercussions. Ask any lawyer: making any voluntary statements to the police
is a bad idea under any circumstances.

Furthermore, my travel within or without the United States is no business of
the government's, as evidenced by the fact that there's no law requiring me to
provide it to them. Every time this has happened, I have been allowed in to
the US. Every time.

The troubling part is that this is really just a demonstration of what the
police would do if Terry v. Ohio or the 5th Amendment weren't in place.

They see absolutely no irony in harassing an American, on American soil, under
the banner of "protecting America".

Being late, I can cope with. The fact that large federal law enforcement
organizations like CBP fundamentally don't get why we have basic rights is the
truly scary part.

~~~
USNetizen
The 5th Amendment covers the right to not have to self-incriminate in the
courtroom or anywhere. If you plead the 5th during a border search, however,
it essentially means that you are likely to commit criminal activity but don't
have to admit to it.

You are probably thinking more of the fourth amendment, which supposedly
protects against unlawful search and seizure - including information about
your whereabouts, etc.

Also, I probably wouldn't use a YouTube lawyer as my sole reference for doing
that sort of thing, just FYI.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Unfortunately internet lawyers are about all we have left. Graduating lawyers
are unemployed in record numbers, because folks now normally get all their
legal advice online, for better or for worse.

~~~
wisty
AFAIK, graduate lawyers don't have jobs because there's more supply (more
students), not less demand.

~~~
bchjam
The legal industry changed after 2008, at least for larger firms. They started
needing to compete on price for one thing, whereas they could largely charge
what they liked before. Clients became very selective of what they chose to
litigate very quickly, presumably based on cost/benefit analyses they had
taken for granted in the past. That doesn't sound like a shift on the supply
side to me.

Also, a substantial amount of legal employment used to be in doing things like
document review that can now be handled by software. This could be seen to be
augmenting the supply factor, since it automates what lawyers used to do.

------
willvarfar
Being a white male I've passed fairly fast through US borders when I visit.
But people who've travelled on business with me who are non-whites have been
severely delayed and eventually meet up at the hotel hours later with
harrowing stories. From my samples I'd say that the border agents routinely
racially profile.

------
jmilloy
I think it's unfortunate that there are false positives. On the other hand, we
are free to complain about our government, and that is fortunate.

But to those of you complaining, are you sure this isn't just another anecdote
that supports your stereotypes? Or is our anti-authoritarian fetish getting in
the way of the data (or lack there of) again?

Have any of us worked with a effective and practical system that never has
false positives? Are you unhappy with the _rate_ of false positives? Do you
even know what that rate is? Are you saying you would you rather have more
false negatives and fewer false positives? Surely anecdotal evidence is biased
towards nasty false positives: we don't read about stories when someone
triggers suspicion and is reasonably investigate before being released, but
are you sure it never happens?

I'm not saying that I think it's acceptable to be wrong sometimes, or to treat
people this way. But I'm also not convinced by anyone who doesn't have answers
to the above questions.

~~~
honzzz
I think that you are completely missing the point. The problem is not about
false positives, the problem is about the abusive behaviour to false
positives. I can totally understand that there are false positives but racial
slurs, threats, shouting, refusal to provide water etc. are never ever
justified.

Abusive behaviour of this kind might be just a personal failure of some
employee... in that case they need to be fired and severely punished. If those
things happen on multiple occasions and nothing happens, nobody is
fired/punished, nobody apologises... than you have a reason to believe that it
is a systematic failure to uphold to certain standards commonly associated
with states that are not police states. That seems to be the case in the US.

~~~
jmilloy
That's fair. I tried to include this perspective as well. Personally I want to
agree that this behavior is never ever justified, but do you know that being
respectful has no impact on the number of actual violators that are caught?
Instead, I expect there is a trade off, and I would sacrifice respect for
increased efficacy, to an extent. Furthermore, the resources required to
remove agents that misbehave compete with the resources to find violators.
Ultimately, I think it's hard to tell from here if we're sacrificing too much
respect given the results.

I'd rather not have to become an expert in border control; I pay taxes so that
someone else can do that. I can see, however, that many people find it hard to
trust that someone else might know more than them. I think it's a shame that
there is not enough transparency; is assuming the worst and crying foul
without proper data really the best we can do?

~~~
juliob
This just happened to my Aussie friend, although not to such a degrading
degree. I don't think either event qualifies as a false positive.

In either case, there was no evidence at all of an overstay. That's like a
spam filter looking at your inbox and arbitrarily picking one email and
putting it in your spam folder; would you call that a false positive? To have
a false positive, there must be some sort of algorithm/procedure/heuristic,
i.e. some sort of non-random selection mechanism. Otherwise, you don't have a
spam filter, you have spam roulette. And that's how it is at the border with
these immigration officers.

------
nailer
> "While doing this, another officer passed and shouted 'Who is she, a TNT?'"
> she said.

What is a 'TNT'?

~~~
Maxious
According to the Racist Slur Database
[http://www.rsdb.org/race/filipinos](http://www.rsdb.org/race/filipinos)

> "Tago Nang Tago" It's a filipino thats an illegal alien. Translates to
> "hides and hides" (from the I.N.S.)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
You know, the name of that database labels everything in it in a very negative
way. I'd say the database itself is a slur. It contains a lot of stuff; its
not all racist. Some of it is self-identification; some is slang.

------
ctdonath
" _The immigration officer then returned to the room and accused Grande of
being a liar. He claimed that he talked to her aunt, who allegedly told him
that Grande will take care of her as a caregiver._ "

I've seen the same up close. Seems it's a standard tactic: when someone is
suspected of immigration transgression, lie about the suspect's prior
statements to others; reason is to throw the person off-guard, increasing the
chance they'll say something actionable. This is very effective, and _VERY_
disturbing to the suspect. The guards are under no obligation to tell the
truth, and use lying as a standard tactic...but anything YOU say can and will
be used against you, with lying to a federal official being one of the worst
things you can do.

------
kubiiii
More and more people are reluctant to go to the US for this. People who
undergo such treatment should be compensated. This would be the fair price for
security and maybe would focus the security effort on real threats.

------
conformal
overall, i am reminded of how sad i am to be a US citizen when i hear these
stories. i have been harrassed by security personnel on a few occasions but
have managed to avoid being stuck in the "private screening" room. the irony
of having someone who is of puertorican decent and does not speak english as
their first language giving me shit when coming into the US from the caribbean
is not lost on me.

unfortunately, the characterization of people in the US being (1) ignorant,
(2) rude and (3) obnoxious is rather accurate. the USG should make an effort
to have competent people manning the border since it makes the US look _awful_
when stuff like this happens. obama, or whoever is president, should make this
shit a priority since we look like a bunch of fucking jerks when it comes to
CBP/ICE.

------
mahranch
Am I the only one who would like to hear the other side of the story? We're
only hearing her side.

Stories like this are beyond useless because they don't present all the facts.
It's a sensationalist one-sided narrative of what happened. Without the other
side's version of events, we cannot look at the story critically and evaluate
the merits of both sides.

~~~
waqf
Yeah, well, if the CBP opened a dialogue about their side of the story I'm
sure we would listen to them. A big part of the problem is that the
authorities do _not_ talk honestly about their view of the proceedings. The
TSA at least makes gestures in that direction, but CBP not so much.

(An _honest_ view from their side would talk about subjects like "What
percentile of our employees are competent to do their jobs? How much would it
cost to improve this?")

------
bonemachine
Don't know what to say. This is just beyond infuriating:

 _The immigration officer then returned to the room and accused Grande of
being a liar. He claimed that he talked to her aunt, who allegedly told him
that Grande will take care of her as a caregiver._

 _She said the immigration officer 's allegations are not true because her
aunt didn't even know she was arriving in the US._

 _" While Officer Mam kept on repeating his questions about why I was in the
US, a fellow officer by the name of Chang, joined and shouted, calling me a
liar. He even searched my purse where I had wedding cards (with money) for my
daughter and future son-in-law, and a birthday card for Joshua (also with
money) and other stuff. He scattered all the items in my purse on the table,
asking why they should believe me, when my aunt, according to him, seems to be
the honest one," Grande said._

------
vixen99
On the other hand you might have this

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-
eborders-s...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-eborders-
scheme-catalogue-of-chaos-as-649000-border-alerts-about-possible-drug-and-
tobacco-smuggling-deleted-8867427.html)

~~~
toyg
To be honest, if the choice is between that and TSA, I'll take that every day.
So they smuggle drugs and tobacco: big deal! With better policies, those
activities wouldn't even exist anyway. Real policing is done with long-running
investigations and intelligence on organised crime, not with coppers doing
data-entry from passports.

------
JackFr
As far as I can tell, the only source for this story is an unverified email
sent by Carina Yonzon Grande to local (Phillippine) news outlets. While can't
believe someone would make the story up from whole cloth, I suspect there are
important details which may have been altered or omitted.

I think it would be prudent to reserve judgement until more information is
available.

------
pinaceae
so where are the other sources confirming this? right now there is a single
source of info, which is the woman in question. stories like this are very
emotional and very often not exactly following the truth. HN gobbles them up,
especially those readers who rarely travel themselves.

i am deeply skeptical about this account. this year alone i have entered the
US about 10 times, coming from European and Asian destinations. not a US
citizen. I have never witnessed _any_ impolite behavior by CBP personnel
towards passengers - and I was standing in the blue line for hours with them.

using the very specific term TNT is very strange for non-filipino officers.

if you worked in retail this reminds me of certain customers from hell that
complained to your manager and told a story that was outrageously one sided.
all the while having been openly abusive to you.

------
rajeemcariazo
This story interests me because I'm a Filipino

~~~
ionforce
But why is it on Hacker News? And why did the submitter use the term Pinay?
People barely know how to spell Filipino, so I don't expect them to know Pinay
either.

"Filipino visitor something something..."

~~~
DanBC
> And why did the submitter use the term Pinay? People barely know how to
> spell Filipino, so I don't expect them to know Pinay either.

The title comes from the submitted article. The article comes from ABC-CBN, a
Philippine news source.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABS-
CBN_News_and_Current_Affai...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABS-
CBN_News_and_Current_Affairs)

> ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs (formerly ABS-CBN News and Public Affairs)
> is the news division of Philippine media conglomerate ABS-CBN Corporation.
> The organization is responsible for the daily news and information gathering
> of its news programs. Its current slogan is Panig sa Katotohanan, Panig sa
> Pagbangon ng Bayan (Tagalog for Sides for the Truth, Sides for the Rise of
> the Nation). According to the SWS media trust survey, ABS-CBN News & Current
> Affairs topped the list among Philippines news and broadcast organizations,
> garnering 68% of the public trust.

> But why is it on Hacker News?

What stories should be on HN, and why do you think this doesn't fit?

------
eyeareque
Is this a reliable news source? I've never heard of the site before. The URL
looks like a play on abc and cbs news.

I don't think it seems that far fetched, but it does come across as being a
fake story. It sadly doesn't surprise me that something like this could
happen, I just question the site this is hosted on.

~~~
lessnonymous
Major Philippines news org.

~~~
eyeareque
That's good to know; thanks for clarifying.

