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Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

richardbarrow.com

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Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#41

Post by CitizenKane »

To be honest, this isn't so hard to do. I went to Kazakhstan to visit a college friend once and got placed on the watch list for the two years after that. Apparently visiting a country with stan in the name, regardless of purpose, is cause for suspicion.

I'm a little surprised they bothered to copy the hard drives. Usually they just do a full search down and then they want you to be gone as soon as possible.

It makes me sad, but I'm unsure as to what to do about it. I'd generally suggest removing the hard drive from the computer, but that's becoming more difficult to do. You can use full drive encryption, but then if they want they might just confiscate the whole computer. Beyond that, at this point that unless your paranoid your communications can be monitored with ease.

Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#42

Post by kintamanimatt »

jasonkester wrote: post #39
kintamanimatt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually people of interest get whisked aside to a secondary screening area. They don't tend to hold up the queue that much, except for the fact the border agent has to temporarily close their desk for a few minutes while they escort that person to another room. In total you might face an extra 60-120 seconds in the line.

I think he was more worried about being vented on. It's hard to do much to a returning US citizen, so the guy in front would eventually be waved through (possibly without the friendly "welcome home" that they're supposed to say). Next guy in line, from anywhere else at all, would get the wrath of justice unleashed on him. Sorry, dude. My bad.

> possibly without the friendly "welcome home" that they're supposed to say

That'd be about as about as not getting art in the foam of my latte! I'd write a letter!

Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#43

Post by justinator »

jasonkester wrote: post #11

For all the mean things that border control agents get away with every day, I personally enjoy "Returning From Thailand" as my little opportunity to even the score a bit. "How long have you been gone?" "I don't know. A year, give or take? Who keeps track?" "Which countries did you visit while you were away? Your landing card just says 'most of them'" "Well probably not most of them really, but definitely enough not t…

The way to beat rudeness is not to be rude back.

I've had these same people greet me with a big smile, ask me how well I'll do in a race (they had already met many people doing the same race) and wish me good luck.

Airports are stressful places and traveling in general can also be stressful. My opinion?

Being rude is not your privilege. It won't fix a broken system. It just makes you personally feel better, at the expense of another. We're all much better than that - or so I should hope.

Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#44

Post by raverbashing »

jacquesm wrote: post #21
lambda wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that in the US, we have strict stop everyone controls at the border (with Canada no less, this isn't just a Mexican border thing), at which you need to show your passport, and we have mobile border controls up to 100 miles within the border. I used to live near a place where they frequently put the "mobile" control on an interstate in Vermont about 80 miles from the border, so I got stopped by it a lot. Of cours…

> at which you need to show your passport And if you're a dirty foreigner you have to have your Iris scanned, a picture taken and your fingerprints taken. I've lived on the US/Canadian border and if they make a flip-book of all the pictures they took of me over the years it would make for a neat animated study in aging.

I don't think that camera has enough resolution for an Iris scan, it's merely a photo

Unless it's something new

Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#45

Post by victorf »

jasonkester wrote: post #39
kintamanimatt wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually people of interest get whisked aside to a secondary screening area. They don't tend to hold up the queue that much, except for the fact the border agent has to temporarily close their desk for a few minutes while they escort that person to another room. In total you might face an extra 60-120 seconds in the line.

I think he was more worried about being vented on. It's hard to do much to a returning US citizen, so the guy in front would eventually be waved through (possibly without the friendly "welcome home" that they're supposed to say). Next guy in line, from anywhere else at all, would get the wrath of justice unleashed on him. Sorry, dude. My bad.

What wrath? The whole line is US citizens, and it's hard to do much to a returning US citizen.

Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#46

Post by arrrg »

ape4 wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Borders have three uses: 1) to keep people out 2) to keep people in 3) to be able to search/detain people without cause I've yet to see a border that I liked. In plenty of countries this now extends to a certain distance away from the border (sometimes surprisingly large), even when you are not actively crossing or have not crossed.

How about the border between EU countries.

At lest in Germany the police still uses them to justify random searches. I haven’t been affected by that since I’m quite white (even though I live in one of those zones where the police can more easily search me). In the train and train stations police seems always laser-focused on inconveniencing brown and other strange looking people. They are masters at racial profiling.

For white people those open borders are quite nice and quite open in every sense of the word. The outside borders of the EU are for aggressively and inhumanly keeping people out.

Ok, if you are young, alone and in a train from the Netherlands to Germany (or in similar suspicious places) you might get searched for drugs but that’s about it. And even then those searches are quite random and don’t happen very often.

But the rampant racial profiling sucks. (One example of why that is the case and obviously unfair: I can be lazy and late and show up at the train station three minutes before my train leaves. I do that regularly. No problem practically every time. The police never once in my life stopped me. And whenever I did see them stop someone in the train station those people had one thing in common: they were not white. If I were brown I would have to think twice about arriving so late and hope that the police doesn’t see me.)

Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#47

Post by tehwalrus »

jacquesm wrote: post #27
ape4 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the border between EU countries.

Which one? Between .ch and one of the surrounding countries? Between any two Schengen countries? Between a Schengen country and a non-Schengen country? What kind? On an airfield, a shipping port or a land border? How are you moving? With a vehicle or just you? Who are you? A Citizen of a Schengen country? A Citizen of the EU? A Citizen of the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia or New-Zealand? A Citizen of anothe…

I remember cycling across the border from France to Italy once. Just a deserted alpine road, it was beautiful...

Also, come to think of it, the sleeper train from Paris to Munich last summer didn't ask me for any ID at all...

The time we drove from Croatia to Italy was a different story though (come to think of it, that was before it joined the EU a month ago, so probably not relevant.)

Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#48

Post by jacquesm »

raverbashing wrote: post #44
jacquesm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at which you need to show your passport And if you're a dirty foreigner you have to have your Iris scanned, a picture taken and your fingerprints taken. I've lived on the US/Canadian border and if they make a flip-book of all the pictures they took of me over the years it would make for a neat animated study in aging.

I don't think that camera has enough resolution for an Iris scan, it's merely a photo Unless it's something new

http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2013/01/fbi-and-dhs-team-nab...

Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#49

Post by raverbashing »

ape4 wrote: post #22
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Borders have three uses: 1) to keep people out 2) to keep people in 3) to be able to search/detain people without cause I've yet to see a border that I liked. In plenty of countries this now extends to a certain distance away from the border (sometimes surprisingly large), even when you are not actively crossing or have not crossed.

How about the border between EU countries.

Do you want a "cool" border between EU countries?

Fly to Ireland with a stop in the UK (from a Schengen country or somewhere else)

You'll go through passport control twice

Re: Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

#50

Post by tehwalrus »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #37
cpursley wrote: post #31

This is another good case of having a second passport as an American (or any place for that matter) for travel and (shtf) insurance purposes. "Distributed Nationality" if you will.

What risks are you trying to protect against?

people being able to see your travel history. Go to places on one side of the argument with one passport, then the other with the other, they never need to know you went to both.
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