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posted by on Monday February 27 2017, @05:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the flying-while-non-american dept.

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


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 27 2017, @10:55AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 27 2017, @10:55AM (#472200) Journal

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/28/travel/ben-gurion-worlds-safest-airport-tel-aviv/ [cnn.com]

    Profiling. In point of fact, a security (customs) agent doesn't actually need a reason to turn someone around at the border. If a particular border agent grows suspicious of someone, for ANY REASON, he can take one or more of many different actions, including denying entry.

    Right or wrong, it works for Israel. It can be made to work in the US, if we pull our heads out of the sand, and stop pretending that we can't know anything about a person just by looking at him.

    Now, what seems funny to me is, much of the US population insists that we always err on the side of safety - then turns around and says that we must maintain open borders, safety be damned.

    Always remember this: If you go to any country in the world, attempting to gain entry for any reason at all - that country can deny you entry, for any reason at all. That includes the US of A. We don't really need a reason to tell someone they have wasted their time, they can't stay, they have to go home. If I have a house full of people, and I grow tired of their company, I can tell them all that it's time to go home - and I need not give them a reason. That even goes for my own brothers and sisters, my sons, anyone who doesn't live here, in my home.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 28 2017, @05:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 28 2017, @05:14PM (#472878)

    > Right or wrong, it works for Israel. It can be made to work in the US,

    Your nihilism knows no bounds in service to your bigotry.

    The US's situation is not even remotely like Israel. As the resident ISIS collaborator it obviously serves your purposes for the US to end up in a state of constant war and apartheid. So fuck you and your trumpanzee bullshit.