Last week, my brother and his longterm girlfriend entered these United States at JFK international airport in New York City. She’s a Chinese citizen with a tourist (B1/B2 visa), which leads to many restrictions on when she’s allowed to enter and for how long. They are always meticulous about playing everything exactly by the book, and this time was no different. The only unusual thing about this latest episode is his girlfriend happened to encounter an authoritarian and power-tripping U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, who pulled her into a room and immediately began berating her. He accused her of breaking the law (she hadn’t), and forced her to hand over her phone and divulge her password. After initially refusing to provide the password, the officer threatened deportation, at which point she relented. Entering the password for access to the phone wasn’t enough, he forced her to write it down on a piece of paper. The officer then proceeded to scroll through her phone for 15-20 minutes, looking for who knows what. My brother was separated from her during this time.
With his girlfriend still isolated in the room, the officer in question emerged and began barking at my brother to sit down in an extremely aggressive manner. The officer told him she had broken the law, at which point he assured him that she hadn’t. At this point, the officer became extremely agitated that a pleb had the nerve to challenge him, and lectured my brother about how he didn’t know the law, pointing out that he wasn’t an immigration lawyer so he couldn’t possibly know his rights. He then implied that the only reason someone would know their civil rights is if they’re a criminal with an intent to commit a crime. The officer also threatened to deport his girlfriend and deny her reentry for five years if my brother continued to challenge his false assertions. She was ultimately allowed to enter.
Many of you will read this and think her experience was a result of not being a U.S. citizen, but the truth is far more disturbing. The border seen by government as a civil rights-free zone where U.S. citizens are being increasingly treated like criminals and subject to the exact same sort of degrading abuse as my brother’s girlfriend. This is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while, and this recent experience inspired me to do so today. Many of you have no idea about how bad things already are.
One of the most disturbing and important articles I’ve read on the topic was published at Naked Capitalism a few months ago titled, Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU Sue Over Warrantless Phone, Laptop Searches at US Border.
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