A friend of mine was denied entry into the US after having travelled there a few times. Since there was no return flight the same day, and the airport was closing overnight, he had to spend the night in a cage (they call it detention center, but it is a cage), where he was raped (they call it body cavity search, but it is penetration without consent, and therefore rape). We he returned the next day, he was <i>actually</i> traumatized.<p>Two hours of questioning is nothing in comparison, and the "I felt like I was physically assaulted" line when there was no actual assault makes me sick. Actual assaults happen all the time, people from supposedly friendly nations are routinely treated like animals, and nobody even receives a letter of apology.
Ahh, the good old days, when the worst thing about being "randomly selected" three times in a row was slight annoyance and delays as they went through your baggage... now they're into full-jackboot mode.<p>Note this writer is white and "anglo"; but her books support respect among the different and a melting-pot worldview, so she's a dangerous subversive and worth of intimidation.<p>Dark times.
It's been this while for quite some time if you have "Muslim" names. "I'm sorry, my computer's stopped working. Please come this way."<p>And yup being sixty or seventy isn't going to help you. Perhaps new rules have made this common (I don't know) but this is how American border personnel are. It's fairly well known among the affected communities.
Simply incredible.<p>She got a 'charming' apology letter only because she's famous and the US got caught with its pants down. To think that this happens every day to people without a platform.
Maybe it is just me (and I am not mother tongue English speaker) but this:<p>>"I thought: 'How can human beings treat other vulnerable human beings in this fashion, <i>in public, in full view of everybody</i>?'<p>Somehow makes me think that the same things if done privately and not in public could even be admissible?