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A Vancouver man was denied entry into the United States after a US Customs and Border Patrol officer read his profiles on the gay hookup app Scruff and the website BBRT.
[...] André, a 30-year-old Vancouver set decorator who declined to give his full name for fear of retaliation from US Customs, describes the experience as "humiliating."[He] says he was planning to visit his boyfriend, who was working in New Orleans. But when he was going through Customs preclearance at Vancouver airport last October, he was selected for secondary inspection, where an officer took his phone, computer and other possessions, and demanded the passwords for his devices.
"I didn't know what to do. I was scared, so I gave them the password and then I sat there for at least an hour or two. I missed my flight," André says. "He came back and just started grilling me. 'Is this your email?' and it was an email attached to a Craigslist account for sex ads. He asked me, 'Is this your account on Scruff? Is this you on BBRT?' I was like, 'Yes, this is me.'"
[...] "I could tell just by his nature that he had no intentions of letting me through. They were just going to keep asking me questions looking for something," he says. "So I asked for the interrogation to stop. I asked if I go back to Canada am I barred for life? He said no, so I accepted that offer."
A month later, André attempted to fly to New Orleans again. This time, he brought what he thought was ample proof that he was not a sex worker: letters from his employer, pay stubs, bank statements, a lease agreement and phone contracts to prove he intended to return to Canada.
When he went through secondary inspection at Vancouver airport, US Customs officers didn't even need to ask for his passwords — they were saved in their own system. But André had wiped his phone of sex apps, browser history and messages, thinking that would dispel any suggestion he was looking for sex work. Instead, the border officers took that as suspicious.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Monday February 27 2017, @05:34AM (5 children)
I submitted this story. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @05:48AM (4 children)
It's Texas, what did he expect? Texas is like the arm pit of the southern US.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @05:54AM (2 children)
You moron - it was an "exception to the rule". Do you know every exception to every rule in your own field of "expertise"? Yeah, Texas is the armpit of the US, California is the anus - which would you rather live in? Don't bother to tell me, you feces eating bacteriophage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @04:09PM (1 child)
I'd rather live in California where human lives have value than in Texas where only human lives belonging to billionaires matter.
California has serious issues, but it's hardly aspiring to be a 2nd world country the way that Texas does.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday February 27 2017, @11:23PM
California is now basically a third-world country because the useful idiots in L.A. and San Francisco allowed too much unfettered immigration, and instead of distributing its wealth to parasitic leeches, it could spend that money on a decent goddamn dam spillway to protect the hard-working White folk who deserve such benefit. But why have a functional state when you could just buy more votes of welfare people, who agree with your party handing out free shit, ensuring that the taxpayers will ensure that your party will stay in power?
Give it time. In a few years California will be a lawless war-zone like Malmo or Mogadishu, and the Whites who manage to flee won't learn their goddamn lessons about "its racist to criticize illegal immigration" and attempt to spread their cancer to other states. As it is, I'm praying that Trump pulls funding for sanctuary cities and all public education institutions who condone curtailing free speech - And enact that law to organizers and participants of paid activism under RICO laws and confiscate their resources.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2017, @06:01AM
Texas is like the arm pit of the southern US.
Hold on there, pardner! It's not "like" at all! And not just of the Southern. Everything is Big in Texas!