
The Joy Of Being Detained By U.S. Customs and Border Protection - alphakappa
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/03/the-joy-of-being-detained-by-u-s-customs-and-border-protection.html
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rossjudson
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.

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ben1040
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.

~~~
triplesec
Agreed. This is really weak and just a selfy moanfest. Much better story:
[http://dasmag.nl/why-i-will-never-return-to-the-usa/](http://dasmag.nl/why-i-
will-never-return-to-the-usa/) (also on HN 2 days ago or so)

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damian2000
Site didn't load for me...

[http://web.archive.org/web/20130822142217/http://www.feld.co...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130822142217/http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2013/03/the-
joy-of-being-detained-by-u-s-customs-and-border-protection.html)

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gst
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.

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alphakappa
Coral cache: [http://www.feld.com.nyud.net/wp/archives/2013/03/the-joy-
of-...](http://www.feld.com.nyud.net/wp/archives/2013/03/the-joy-of-being-
detained-by-u-s-customs-and-border-protection.html)

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

Might there be a mirror somewhere?

~~~
RDeckard
Didn't work for me as you wrote this post, but works now.

------
RDeckard
Overreaction.

