Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much”

For all the mean things that border control agents get away with every day, I personally enjoy &quot;Returning From Thailand&quot; as my little opportunity to even the score a bit.<p>&quot;How long have you been gone?&quot;<p>&quot;I don&#x27;t know. A year, give or take? Who keeps track?&quot;<p>&quot;Which countries did you visit while you were away? Your landing card just says &#x27;most of them&#x27;&quot;<p>&quot;Well probably not <i>most</i> of them really, but definitely enough not to fit in that space. Let&#x27;s see... [followed by a complete list]<p>&quot;What&#x27;s your occupation?&quot;<p>&quot;I own a software company. It pretty much runs itself these days, and I just check in every once in a while to see how things are going.&quot;<p>&quot;Is this bag your only luggage?&quot;<p>&quot;Yeah. I was only gone a year, remember. I find you don&#x27;t really need much stuff in the tropics. I&#x27;ve worn this shirt 40 days running now. I think I&#x27;ll buy a new one now that I&#x27;m home&quot;<p>Basically, it&#x27;s your opportunity to remind them that their job is to sit in a little cube talking to people who are actually out there leading exciting lives. And that their attempts to make other people&#x27;s lives worse is not really doing a very good job of making their own life any better.<p>One day they&#x27;ll quit and go find a better job. Or give up trying to make other people&#x27;s lives worse, thus making the world a slightly better place.<p>Seems to be working. These days at LAX, it seems that one in four of the people manning those desks is genuinely friendly. And the ones that need this sort of treatment are few and far between.

Borders have three uses:<p>1) to keep people out<p>2) to keep people in<p>3) to be able to search&#x2F;detain people without cause<p>I&#x27;ve yet to see a border that I liked. In plenty of countries this now extends to a certain distance away from the border (sometimes surprisingly large), <i>even</i> when you are not actively crossing or have not crossed.

As a dual-citizen I still find it mind-boggling that a US border guard asks me questions about my private life. It still isn&#x27;t clear to me what can happen if I answer &quot;wrong&quot; (e.g. the answers do not meet his expectations).<p>For comparison, in many (if not most) countries (I don&#x27;t want to name my specific case because this could derail the discussino) a border guard presented with a passport issued by his own country has exactly two options: 1) arrest the person on the spot (arrest meaning what it should, e.g. call the police and follow the law) or 2) let the person in. There are no questions, because the border guard has zero discretion in letting the person in. In general, a citizen of any country should always be able to enter that country, no questions asked (with the possibility of being arrested right afterwards, of course).<p>I find it both strange and disturbing that this gray area seems to be universally accepted and that outrage (like in the article above) is rare.

I have no words. They won&#x27;t even stop at looking through your files on a groundless suspicion - they&#x27;ll <i>clone your harddrive</i>? With your naked pictures of your girlfriend, diary, company secrets and everything?<p>And I&#x27;m a &quot;rights-free person&quot; (a foreigner). If they do this stuff to citizens, I can&#x27;t even imagine what sort of authority they have over foreigners. You guys really need to rein in your government, this is getting insane.

&gt; They even went through his laptop and copied his hard disks.<p>I may be completely out of line here but why can&#x27;t he request a lawyer before doing this kind of stuff? Why are they allowed to dig so deep into someone without any evidence of doing something illegal?

I wonder how many people have the US on their personal no-fly lists because of such stories?

I&#x27;m sorry, but if you try to enter the US with any physical objects that have even the remotest chance of being interpreted as being illegal, or digital storage that isn&#x27;t encrypted, you&#x27;re just asking for trouble these days.

What I would love to do is to get stamps from the &#x27;axis of evil&#x27; all on one page of my passport by visiting Iran, Iraq and North Korea, then travel the the US. Maybe I can get them to also stamp that page :)

To be honest, this isn&#x27;t so hard to do. I went to Kazakhstan to visit a college friend once and got placed on the watch list for the two years after that. Apparently visiting a country with stan in the name, regardless of purpose, is cause for suspicion.<p>I&#x27;m a little surprised they bothered to copy the hard drives. Usually they just do a full search down and then they want you to be gone as soon as possible.<p>It makes me sad, but I&#x27;m unsure as to what to do about it. I&#x27;d generally suggest removing the hard drive from the computer, but that&#x27;s becoming more difficult to do. You can use full drive encryption, but then if they want they might just confiscate the whole computer. Beyond that, at this point that unless your paranoid your communications can be monitored with ease.

Yeah, this is not freedom. It&#x27;s alright, USA. But stop pretending otherwise.

This is another good case of having a second passport as an American (or any place for that matter) for travel and (shtf) insurance purposes.<p>&quot;Distributed Nationality&quot; if you will.

&gt; The pictures of your kids taking a bath maybe interpreted in a different way by immigration officers<p>Reminds me of a story just like that. The only source I can find now: <a href="http://www.muripo.com/2013/06/07/elderly-man-arrested-for-possession-of-photos-of-children-playing-with-water/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.muripo.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;07&#x2F;elderly-man-arrested-for-po...</a> but I&#x27;m sure quite it was on HN.

He flew home to the USA but he was processed in Canada? In other words, did he fly into Canada from SE Asia and then immediately drive to the USA? Honestly, that would look a little suspicious to me if I was a customs officer.<p>I&#x27;ve flown into L.A. and Dallas&#x2F;Fort-Worth a bunch of times from the Asia Pacific region of the world and never received a glance at any of my visa pages.

I had a business colleague who was based elsewhere in Asia for several years. He visited Thailand every few weeks the entire stay. When he returned to the US, immigration gave him the same rundown. When he finally convinced them that he was just a young guy who wanted to have fun, they waved him through with a smile.

It&#x27;s odd that we still &quot;stamp&quot; passports, allowing border guards to see what countries you have visited in the past. This information should not be available to any authorities by any means, but especially not appended to your identity documents. Afaik, only Israel has a correct policy on this.

Few articles on here lately regarding government &quot;security&quot; operations and the TSA. I can sympathize with these people, however most of the issues I have personally encountered have been outside the US, not while leaving the States or upon arrival. I&#x27;ve recently signed up for Global Entry, which is worth it I think, if you&#x27;re concerned about any of these things. You are pre-screened in advance, and pretty much not bothered with immigration beyond that when you leave or arrive (note: TSA screenings still apply, unless you are a candidate for TSA pre check which, I believe, only applies to domestic flights as of now).

Honestly, if there were a minimum IQ rating of 25 at DHS to be considered for employment, most of our problems with that agency would evaporate overnight.

Unfortunate story, but also very different than my experience with US border control. As someone who travels outside the US many times a year, including to somewhat odd places (last year has included Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Malaysia, Ukraine), I&#x27;ve never had a single problem or spent more than a minute talking to anyone from customs or immigration.<p>Of course, the TSA is another story.

Honestly, this is refreshing. The US does not have a serious terrorism problem, so the massive amount of border searches are very trouble. We&#x27;re giving up a lot of freedom to solve a problem that we don&#x27;t really have.<p>On the other hand, we <i>do</i> have a pretty serious human trafficking problem, so I&#x27;m glad to see someone taking it seriously.

I have been searched by borders and customs so many times in Seattle that I think they single put Americans for special treatment. I never come with much in my luggage (I shop in the states since china is expensive), so the searches go,quickly at least.

You are a mean person. Even if the ends justify these particular means, as you suggest (and I don&#x27;t even think you&#x27;ve got the cause and effect right here), insulting and demeaning someone far less privileged than you was immoral.

US, land of the free…