My Interrogation at the American Border

[Ken Burch]

http://www.rabble.ca/news/2010/08/my-interrogation-us-border
By Stefan Christoff
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"Under fluorescent lights at the U.S./Canada border, south of Montreal, questions on the war in Iraq and the Palestinian Intifada were fired towards me by officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

It quickly became clear after arriving at the border and presenting my passport to U.S. customs officials that crossing into the U.S. would include an unwanted inquiry. After scanning my Canadian passport, gruff American officials hastily directed me to sit in the waiting area. Shortly after, an armed U.S. official called my name, directing me toward another section of the border crossing station.

An interrogation on my political views ensued, stretching out over an hour in an isolated holding area at U.S. customs control, the barrage of questions extended in unnerving ways into my involvement in social justice activism for more than a decade in Montreal."

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A DEMOCRATIC administration isn't supposed to keep people out of this country over their politics. We're supposed to leave political repression to the 'pugs...ESPECIALLY when it's antileft. Democrats aren't supposed to treat the left as the enemy.

[Ken Burch]

1. More:

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"Can you tell me what you think about the war in Iraq?" questioned the young American man in uniform. In response my words outlined my opposition to the 2003 U.S.-lead invasion and the ongoing military occupation under the Obama administration, a common view in Montreal, where over 200,000 people demonstrated on the streets in the winter months prior to the U.S. invasion, some of the largest anti-war demonstrations in North America.

"Do you have family in the Middle East?" he inquired, offering one of the few surprising questions in the interrogation. In follow-up, a barrage of detailed questions focusing on the family names and geographical origins of my mother, my father and all my grandparents were presented.
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[Ken Burch]

2. And a little more:

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Today, my account and critique on the U.S. border interrogation is being written in New York City, as border agents explained, after an hour of questioning, that they would allow me entry into the U.S. "this time," words that could be viewed as a subtle threat toward future choices in relation to social activism.

In response to interrogation these words are written to contribute to growing opposition to the increasing militarization of borders around the world, extreme examples stand in the fortified walls along the militarized U.S./Mexico border, or the Israeli apartheid wall in Palestine.

In my mind it is critical to also challenge the unacceptable reality that social justice activists, critical toward government policy, are facing detention and interrogation along borders. Challenging ideas voiced by activists must not be silenced but cherished as a contribution to meaningful democratic debate.
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[Liberty Belle]

4. In San Diego I've been hassled by BP agents on THIS side of the border with increasing alarm.

I'd never had that happen in my 50 years of living here, until the past year. While driving on a road parallel to the border last year, I was stopped for no reason and and asked my nationality, what city I was born in, etc.

A few months later, entering the Anza Borrego Desert area with a friend, we were stopped by BP agents who pointed guns in our faces and grilled us both.

Then last week, at a checkpoint on I-8 in East County, a Border Patrol Agent asked my nationality (I'm white, but had a black passenger). He then demanded to look in my trunk. I asked him if he had probably cause. He didn't, so I refused. He asked why. I said I didn't have anything to hide but just didn't want anybody pawing through all my belongings for no reason. He looked angry, so at that point I identified myself as a journalist and offered to show him our press passes. He grudgingly let us through.

This doesn't feel like America anymore. We weren't even trying to cross a border, so what right did they have to stop us at all? On none of these occasions was I doing anything to warrant these random stops, two of which were not even at a designated checkpoint.

The guns in faces was the scariest of all. I wondered who is training our Border Patrol now - Blackwater?

Does anybody know?

[KT2000]

5. that is a good question

we had an idiot apply for and get a grant from Homeland Security to train people in catching terrorists.
He had some acreage that he used for the training until he was sued by neighbors who objected to the loud gunshots.
Is this how real agents are trained?
Also - how much money has been thrown at such training by similar people with big ideas to strike it rich on grants from Homeland Security.

[Gravel Democrat]

6. "what right did they have to stop us at all?"

ACLU Assails 100-Mile Border Zone as ‘Constitution-Free’ – Update

Government agents should not have the right to stop and question Americans anywhere without suspicion within 100 miles of the border, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday, pointing attention to the little known power of the federal government to set up immigration checkpoints far from the nation’s border lines.

After 9/11, Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security the right to use some of its powers deeper within the country, and now DHS has set up at least 33 internal checkpoints where they stop people, question them and ask them to prove citizenship, according to the ACLU

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/10/aclu-assails-10/

also:
https://www.checkpointusa.org/blog/



Vote Your Congress Critter a vacay: http://www.draintheswamps.com/

[PDJane]

3. I believe that,

if Harper can get away with the G-20 and the border crap, we're all heading to a police state, both there and here.

[Scuba]

7. If they ask me what I think of the war in Iraq, I probably won't be allowed back in the country.