Calgary seniors shocked at being fingerprinted, mug-shotted by U.S. border officials

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Calgary Sun



BY BILL KAUFMANN, CALGARY SUN
FIRST POSTED: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2017 10:51 PM MST UPDATED: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2017 11:11 PM MST


Calgary seniors Carl and Sandra Hannigan were looking forward to a stress-free flight home after a 10-day visit to Mexico.

But the two said they were stunned when U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials pulled them aside at the Salt Lake City International Airport to fingerprint and photograph them.

The couple were on their way to catch a connecting flight to Calgary on Feb. 13 when what they call the privacy intrusion occurred, a process that took about 10 minutes.

After showing their boarding passes and Canadian passports, "we were told to put our hands on a green scanner, then they took facial photos," said Carl Hannigan, 75, a Calgary veterinarian.

Read more: http://www.calgarysun.com/2017/02/22/calgary-seniors-shocked-at-being-fingerprinted-mug-shotted-by-us-border-officials

[No Vested Interest]

1. Not very neighborly. nt

[SunSeeker]

2. WTF?

I have never seen this done at an airport. Makes me not want to fly.

What possible reason could CBP have for doing this?

[msongs]

4. job security - more duties more pay bigger bloated LEO budgets and agencies

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. The Powers that be want as much info on each of us as they can find.

Ever since the Patriot Act, they have ramped up grabbing ID info as often as possible.

I refuse to participate as much as possible.
I most certainly refuse to let some stranger touching my body, and to feeling unsafe from our gov. when I travel.
thus I haven't flown since 9-11.

[jmowreader]

10. There's one reason they're doing it

[Bayard]

28. OMG!

Is that a real pic or photo-shopped!?

[csziggy]

30. It seems to be from this Gawker article from last year

Though the photo is credited to Splash News.

Is Donald Trump’s Hair a $60,000 Weave? A Gawker Investigation [Updated]
788.87K
Ashley Feinberg
05/24/16 12:30PM

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has generated an unceasing torrent of press attention that some estimate to be worth roughly $2 billion. Yet the central mystery at the very core of his persona—his inscrutable hairdo—has somehow, impossibly, remained unsolved. Until, perhaps, now.

A tipster who claimed knowledge of Trump’s hair recently came to Gawker with a potential solution to the enigma: Trump’s hair is not his own, costs tens of thousands of dollars for installation and upkeep, and comes from a man as mysterious as Trump is bombastic.

This solution that Trump, our tipster says, sought for his hair woes is a little-known, patented hair restoration treatment called a “microcylinder intervention.” It’s only performed by one clinic that we know of—Ivari International—where our source once sought treatment, and where he says he learned of Trump’s apparent patronage. What’s more, Ivari’s New York location was inside Trump Tower—on a floor that’s now private and reserved for Donald Trump’s children’s offices.*

http://gawker.com/is-donald-trump-s-hair-a-60-000-weave-a-gawker-invest-1777581357

[DFW]

13. This has happened before--and much worse

Several years ago, some German tour group on the way back to Germany from a vacation in Mexico. The flight back included changing planes in Houston. A German woman in the group, in her mid-sixties, who spoke very little English, was taken aside by CPB, detained, searched, interrogated by English-speaking CBP officials whom she did not understand, missed her plane home, and then released after something like 16 hours. No reason given, no explanation offered. Made the local papers here in the Düsseldorf area. I think Bush was still in office at the time. Quite a few German travelers vowed to never again set foot on United States soil. For some reason, we seem to have several steroid-addled control freaks in CPB who get away with this bullying on a periodic basis.

Even my wife has been detained two times in a row at the Atlanta airport when entering the USA. We usually go through there every December. The first time, it was because she had spent more time (though under the legal limit) in the USA than the CBP official found appropriate, although her "more time than usual" was spent in NYC while our elder daughter was having an operation--not that it was any CBP's business. Her return ticket showed she was not overstaying her visa-free quota. They detained her (us) for an hour anyway. Last December, when we arrived, the jerkoff CBP guy--himself an immigrant--decided he'd pull a power play, and detained her "because her fingerprints didn't match." Now the fingers she presented last December were the same ones she had used the last 100 times she had entered the USA, so the guy was just being nasty. That detention lasted almost an hour, too.

The screening used to hire our CBP officers is obviously sorely deficient.

[uppityperson]

3. They've been doing this with incoming visa holders, but not to non- visa like Canada. K&R for bah

[meadowlander]

7. I had to do this last year

on a flight coming in from Australia and I was in the US passport holder's line.

I think it's just the newest fancy equipment they need to justify paying for.

I think it was at LAX but may have been SFO.

[Alice11111]

11. US citizen and my partner is a UK citizen. Did it at DFW X London. Yeah, fancy equipment.

They did it to everyone Worst part is the photos are awful...way worse than Nick Nolte mug shots. They stretch and morph you in all directions. You could not identify us from those photos. They gave us a copy. It wasn't a big stressful deal though. Just part of the usual security stuff. It maybe took an xtra 30 to 45 seconds. Not nearly as bad as what you get if you forget to dump your water or your toothpaste tube is too big.
I used to be pulled out and taken to an isolation room. Evidently, someone who's suspect has something major in common with me. This time, I floated right through, so I liked it.

[meadowlander]

12. Yeah, the photo quality was shocking.

It's not like I was looking my best walking off a 26 hour flight anyway, but the photos print out distorted on this cheap paper like a receipt and I looked like I was coming off a seven year meth binge in mine.

[Alice11111]

31. Funny that we are discussing this.7 year meth binge.LOL

Who would have thought that those stupid photos were so, so ridiculously bad that it was discussed in a blog. Like a joke you would expect at a Day of the Dead party.
My thought at the time was, how could they even be useful? Yeah, I had forgotten about the very cheap paper. I don't think I've ever seen paper so thin. You could see through it. It just sort of popped out right in your face.

[kimbutgar]

24. I also had this done in 2015 coming into SFO from London

Terrible picture after a 10 hour flight. Picture and fingerprints. But last year we came in from Frankfurt to Dulles and no picture or fingerprints.

[zentrum]

5. Outrageous.

It's to demonstrate to all of us---and to get us all used to---an authoritarian state.

[Hortensis]

17. Like this couple, I find this "disturbing and unnerving".

Border security is for examination. It happens. Our Danish DIL has been detained twice on returning from Europe. My husband and I once had our RV searched on returning from Mexico and another time on entering Canada. But this feels different.

"I'm not the kind to zip my lip but I didn't dare ask him,"

Shocking to realize how this gentleman probably really needed to be very careful.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Security theater for Trumpanzees, but not entertaining for the victims

Make the Trumpanzees think something is being done, whether it is just show or not.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Good for US tourism jobs? Who benefits: Cape Breton or Cape Cod? . . . . nt

[DFW]

14. We're still giong to Cape Cod this year

But if my wife gets harassed again, she might call it quits. She has been coming to the USA since 1975, and has only been really harassed unjustifiably in the last two years or so. She only takes it because she has seen that I, as an American citizen, have also been harassed by German authorities, though not at the border.

[George II]

19. Every year or two I drive from New England out to Detroit to visit my brother, then...

....enter Canada from Michigan to drive to Toronto to visit other relatives. When I return home I cross into the US at one of the Niagara Falls crossings. I'm wondering if I'm going to have problems this summer since I'll be crossing the border in two places hundreds of miles apart.

[DFW]

21. It's probably luck of the draw

If you CBP officer is competent, it should be no problem. If not, a passport with a visa signed by God in triplicate won't save you from an unnecessary bureaucratic ordeal.

[George II]

22. I've been stopped and had my car scrutinized several times over the last few decades....

...but it has always been entering Canada, not re-entering the United States. I have a US passport, but up until about 20 years ago I never needed it to cross the border. It's a whole new world out there.

[DFW]

26. I've had varying experiences with Canada

I don't get there often. I've been at Canadian embassies and residences probably ten times as often as I've actually bee to Canada. The last time I was there, in 2015, it was no sweat at all for either my wife or for me. We landed at Vanvouver airport, and were just asked what the purpose of our visit to Canada was. We said what it was, and that was that. The time before that was long ago: 1998. We were in a rented car on the ferry from Seattle to Victoria, and in those days, my residence was still Dallas, my wife's was in Düsseldorf. The Canadian border police asked where our kids, traveling on their US passports, lived, and when they heard "Germany," asked them if they were OK with this. Luckily, they said, "of course," in perfect English and spontaneously, so the Canadian border guards didn't give us any further grief.

In 1994, I even temporary naturalized a British subject for three hours. He lost his U.S. citizenship again after dinner, though. We were in Detroit, and someone had recommended a restaurant in Windsor, so we grabbed a taxi. The taxi driver wailed when he heard he had a passenger who was neither American nor Canadian. When we hit the Canadian border booth, the guy just asked "All American citizens?" We said, "yep." And he waved us through. On the way back, the US border guard asked us what we did in Windsor. I said we had just gone for dinner, and were on the way back to our hotel. He didn't even ask where we were from, and I had told my friend from London to keep his bloody trap shut.

[George II]

29. For the 50 or 60 times I've traveled up there, I think I've driven about 90% of the time...

...as a child we took the train up to Toronto from NYC a couple of times, and I've flown up there a half dozen times for work. All the other times went there by car. It seems that driving has less hiccups than flying.

[geek tragedy]

15. US citizens need to do this in Honduras and Panama.

Seems like a nothingburger.

[Demsrule86]

34. Sorry when we start enacting policies similar to Panama and Honduras...

it is not a nothingburger...this sort of behavior will destroy tourism in this country.

[a la izquierda]

16. This is done during Global Entry for US citizens...

Not sure what's so outrageous. I love it. It means I don't have to talk to immigration officials for more than a second.

[CabalPowered]

32. Yep, Global Entry is worth the time

I was through immigration and customs in less than 5 minutes last week, through Seattle. And it qualifies you for PreCheck.

Fingerprints and headshots for visitors has been SOP for a couple of years now. I'm not sure I understand the outrage here. The upside is that if their record is clean, they're eligible for PreCheck without even applying. Most countries I visit are collecting at least headshots. Fingerprints are becoming more common.

[sinkingfeeling]

18. Oh, I can't wait until I try to visit another country this year. Countries

will start tit-for-tat because of the USA's stupidity.

[George II]

20. Wear a hat saying "I voted for Clinton" - they'll welcome you with open arms.

[left-of-center2012]

23. Another 'incident' ...

There was a recent report of two elderly Canadian women who wanted to cross over into the U.S. on a shopping trip.
They were questioned for 5 hours, including their opinion of President Trump,
and then denied entry.
They were only told the U.S. has to protect itself from Islamic terrorists.

[greymattermom]

25. Those towns in upstate New York and Vermont do a lot of business with Canadians from Montreal

Soon that will end, I suppose. My Canadian relatives used to vacation in Stowe. So much for that, too.

[a la izquierda]

33. My best friend is from Montreal.

His family has said they will not visit while the orange idiot is president.

[DFW]

27. I wonder how many billions of dollars in border business we will lose while this keeps up

I'm betting high one digit billions, maybe even low two digits.

[dembotoz]

35. i live in a flyover state, perhaps we will become a flyover country

best way to avoid us border police is not to go there....if i were and airline god i would be looking at direct canada to mexico flights