According to an article on TheStar.com: “A British Columbian man has learned the hard way that you don’t ask a U.S. border guard to be polite when he asks you to turn off your vehicle’s engine.”
Not the best PR for the CBP or the US as a whole, but it seems that our reputation to the outside world has become a very low priority for immigration-related government agencies. This is just a sampling of the incidents that are occurring regularly at the nation’s airports and border crossings.
If you are abused or wrongly detained at a border crossing, get through the incident without instigating the officer. When you are released, either file a formal complaint with the CBP and, if the story is interesting enough, use the press to publicize it – as this alleged victim did. The Obama administration and Secretary Napolitano need to get to work on not only changing our immigration laws, but amending the policies and not allowing officers to abuse their power or mistreat foreign-nationals with impunity.
The Canadian in this story was wrong, but so was the CBP officer. The Canadian more than suffered the consequence of his action, let us hope that the officer in question is investigated and disciplined appropriately so that other CBP officers learn that this behavior unacceptable.
