17 ms·

British holidaymakers 'traumatised' after arrest at US border

54 points by smacktoward 7y ago

aazaa 7y ago
> They say they were driving with family members on 3 October when, to avoid an animal, they veered onto a small road. > A police officer then pulled them over, told them they were in the US state of Washington and arrested them. Horrible and inexcusable experience to be sure, but the explanation for how they ended up in the US needs some work.
- kevin_b_er 7y ago
  There's several places where only a small ditch separates the two countries.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    I get that, and veering over to the other side to avoid a badger or something is understandable, but why would you stay on the other side at that point instead of going back to the road you were originally on? There must be some detail not reported to the public that made it make sense.
    - rabidrat 7y ago
      "moments later". It takes time to turn around.
    - Luc 7y ago
      'Oh, this road is a lot less bumpy and is also going in the right direction, let's just keep following it'. Did this across a European border by accident. Took us 10 minutes to notice the different style of road furniture.
    - hestipod 7y ago
      "There must be some detail not reported to the public that made it make sense." Is something people say over and over to try NOT to accept bad things happen a lot to innocent people. It's not always in bad faith and I am not saying it is for you (though it increasingly IS online especially), since we are generally taught as long as we are "good" that it will all be ok and that authority are the good guys. But real life proves that not to be the case much of the time and this disconnect is hard for people to accept so they say things like the above...blame victims...call it fake news etc.
      - jandrese 7y ago
        For me it's a natural reaction to seeing sensationalized stories. Step back and ask yourself what the reporter is leaving out of the story, especially when the story seems outrageous on the surface. Sometimes the story is completely right, but a lot of times they're omitting key details that make it much more sensible.
  - newnewpdro 7y ago
    If that! When I visited northern MN, the boundary waters area, I could have very easily strayed into Canada on the back roads I was traveling. They weren't even paved, there were no ditches, it's mostly water/marsh/swamp up there. There's just some small road signs here and there notifying of the need to cross into Canada via the checkpoints on the main roads, but they're often posted where you enter the unmaintained gravel road - not right at the border. These back roads were established long before we cared about crossing the Canadian border. If you happen to be camping or canoeing in the area for an extended period, it's very likely you'll get turned around and accidentally go north instead of south on one of these back roads and find yourself in Canada when you get back to driving. Furthermore since they're not really well maintained, it's possible you'll be taking turns to avoid washouts or other obstructions like fallen trees. You might stray into Canada just to reach your destination because the preferred route is out of service.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that the entire border between the US and Canada has fencing or other barriers. Sometimes there's just a road with an easily-missed sign or plaque. For example: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-really-parts-of-the-US–Canada-border-that-are-unprotected https://www.quora.com/Are-there-really-parts-of-the-US–Canad...
- rtkwe 7y ago
  There are loads of spots along the border there where the US/Canada separation is only a grassy median [0]. So it's odd but not unbelievable. There's an even more extreme example to the east near Vermont where the border runs through individual buildings in the town of Stanstead [1,2] and there are just white lines on some streets you're not supposed to cross. [0] https://goo.gl/maps/XasmFG9Ms6FJUUsRA https://goo.gl/maps/XasmFG9Ms6FJUUsRA [1] https://goo.gl/maps/5aWrrN5TjuE8ennS7 https://goo.gl/maps/5aWrrN5TjuE8ennS7 [2] https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/stanstead-town-border https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/stanstead-town-bor...
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Pretty funny that there's no street view for the laneways crossing the border in your second line. The SV driver was like "yeah nope, not going there."
    - daveslash 7y ago
      Honest question: How are people supposed to cross the border right there? Clearly there's a maintained and passable road there -- there's a stop sign, and then a white line where the border is. Are you supposed to have some pre-approval like TSA pre-check? Call ahead? Stop and wait for a Border Agent to come running out of the library? Go by better to ask forgiveness than ask permission?
      - beerandt 7y ago
        Self reporting is a thing for citizens. Some unmanned crossings have phonebooths that directly connect to an agent. Edit: I'm not sure that these still exist as a standalone thing. They may have been phased out after 9/11.
  - YZF 7y ago
    The article does say "South of Vancouver". I'm from the Vancouver area and I can't say I've seen random unmarked roads crossing the border (there are some exceptions further east including some campgrounds that are in the US but are only accessible from the Canadian side). It's pretty easy to accidentally cross the border on foot though. Over the last few months there have been a lot more stories about the US/Canada border. Apparently a lot more people are getting barred arbitrarily from entering the US. I would normally expect these sort of incident should be resolved with a warning and returning to the other country. It seems for some reason someone decided to make an example out of these guys.
- o_nate 7y ago
  Not sure why the parent is being downvoted. More detail of what happened would surely be informative. Ideally including the perspective of the arresting officer. Why were they pulled over? Why did he suspect they were in the country illegally? Lots of unanswered questions here.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    They claim that they were stopped for crossing the border. > Michael turned onto an unmarked road and moments later, multiple police cars and Border Patrol agents appeared and told him: ‘You crossed an international border’, the family claim. From: https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/15/british-family-jailed-swerving-avoid-animal-ending-us-road-10919849/ https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/15/british-family-jailed-swervin...
- wil421 7y ago
  Check out the follow up: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50067575 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50067575
  - efa 7y ago
    Thanks for posting that. Have to be careful not to rush to judgement on anything these days.
crooked-v 7y ago
I wonder how much money the US government is going to waste on arresting, holding, processing, and then deporting people who would have turned around and left if asked.
- tantalor 7y ago
  Wrong question... right question is, who is enriching themselves on this policy?
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    I don't think it's anything so elaborate as that. I think it's simple sadism on the part of the thugs. They just like exerting power.
    - senderista 7y ago
      Can confirm, I was detained by the INS back in the 90s, with my US passport in hand, because I didn't look "American" enough. After holding me for a couple hours I was dismissed with no apology and no explanation, though a customs official helpfully explained that I "looked like a terrorist".
- Rebelgecko 7y ago
  According to another article, the Canadian border police wouldn't let them back in. It's a shady story— two of the "holidaymakers" had recently been denied US visas and were carrying $16,000 (USD!) in cash
_bxg1 7y ago
U.S. Border Patrol has become a government-sanctioned ring of thugs living out a power fantasy. Nothing more. Disgusting.
- rolph 7y ago
  there is the option for a border agent to inspect documents and persons/property like an entry inspection, but the problem occurs when the crossing is not a designated port of entry. They dont have to throw the book at them like they did but "r'spect muh athoritay !" seems to be the predominant mentality.
- velox_io 7y ago
  A grey area where you don't have any rights, if they don't like anything about you they can just put you on the next return flight. That's if they let you fly there in the first place. I know someone who was denied access because they had a criminal record from over a decade ago, even though it was a minor offence (no prison sentence). This is a UK citizen, so you can imagine how much more difficult it is for someone from a less favourable country. This is advice for Brits from the US Embassy: "Can you advise me if my arrest, caution, conviction will prevent me from traveling visa free and registering under ESTA? We cannot advise whether a traveler’s specific situation will have a bearing on their eligibility to travel visa free under the Visa Waiver Program. Our advice is that if you have ever been arrested, cautioned or convicted you apply for a visa." Cautioned! You don't even need to be convicted or even arrested for an offence.
aidenn0 7y ago
One thing I've noticed with the culture of law-enforcement in the US is that there seems to be a mental divide of people into bins of "criminals" and "not criminals."[1] People in the second bin get treated reasonably and people in the first bin get zero benefit of the doubt. By breaking the law, these travellers got sorted into the "criminals" bin and are now treated like shit. In addition, the high punitive nature of merely being arrested means that probable cause has replaced due process in our system. If a LEO treats you like a criminal (i.e. like human garbage) and has probable cause to do so, you are left with essentially no legal recourse. 1: There's also a 3rd bin of "law enforcement" but that is tangential to this article.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  It makes more sense when you realize the two bins are also labeled “not white” and “white.” (Which also explains the shock white people experience when circumstances result in them being sorted into the “not white” bin — suddenly they’re experiencing treatment from law enforcement they otherwise would never see.)
  - ASalazarMX 7y ago
    Also US citizens and foreigners. God help you if you intersect more than one of the bad sides.
  - eots 7y ago
    What racist drivel right here on HN.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    It is more subtle than that. In most cases a female PoC in business attire is more likely to be sorted into the "not criminal" bin than a white man with a typical "white trash" look. The racism comes in when you compare reactions to casually dressed white vs casually dressed PoC. And it gets dialed up even higher if the PoC is showing any ethnic styles. If you use a model of "Random officer X encounters random citizen Y" if citizen Y is a PoC, they are more likely to be prejudged into the "criminal" bin, but this is not the only factor (gender, inferred socioeconomic class, &c. will also play a role). This is very different than labeling the bins "not white" and "white"
tantalor 7y ago
> it has even damaged our relationship Might have a case for lawsuit arguing alienation of affections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alienation_of_affections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alienation_of_affections
wil421 7y ago
@dang Can we get this article flagged? If I wanted something like this I’d visit /news or /worldnews. Immigration and the political climate in the US is very hot right now. It’s not the reason I read HN, if you want your rage fix read elsewhere. > Hacker News Guidelines What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Significant geopolitical events have become a mainstay of HN, for better or worse. This one is a landmark example because it falls outside of the pattern people have (sadly) grown accustomed to. Edit: The second sentence was referring to the significance of the event (and why it would therefore be interesting to people on HN); I didn't mean to say the HN post itself was an outlier in some way.
  - wil421 7y ago
    Looks like it was flagged. Thankfully others agreed with me instead of allowing it to become a mainstay like you suggested.

54 points by smacktoward 7y ago

> They say they were driving with family members on 3 October when, to avoid an animal, they veered onto a small road. > A police officer then pulled them over, told them they were in the US state of Washington and arrested them. Horrible and inexcusable experience to be sure, but the explanation for how they ended up in the US needs some work.

kevin_b_er 7y ago
There's several places where only a small ditch separates the two countries.
- jandrese 7y ago
  I get that, and veering over to the other side to avoid a badger or something is understandable, but why would you stay on the other side at that point instead of going back to the road you were originally on? There must be some detail not reported to the public that made it make sense.
  - rabidrat 7y ago
    "moments later". It takes time to turn around.
  - Luc 7y ago
    'Oh, this road is a lot less bumpy and is also going in the right direction, let's just keep following it'. Did this across a European border by accident. Took us 10 minutes to notice the different style of road furniture.
  - hestipod 7y ago
    "There must be some detail not reported to the public that made it make sense." Is something people say over and over to try NOT to accept bad things happen a lot to innocent people. It's not always in bad faith and I am not saying it is for you (though it increasingly IS online especially), since we are generally taught as long as we are "good" that it will all be ok and that authority are the good guys. But real life proves that not to be the case much of the time and this disconnect is hard for people to accept so they say things like the above...blame victims...call it fake news etc.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      For me it's a natural reaction to seeing sensationalized stories. Step back and ask yourself what the reporter is leaving out of the story, especially when the story seems outrageous on the surface. Sometimes the story is completely right, but a lot of times they're omitting key details that make it much more sensible.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  If that! When I visited northern MN, the boundary waters area, I could have very easily strayed into Canada on the back roads I was traveling. They weren't even paved, there were no ditches, it's mostly water/marsh/swamp up there. There's just some small road signs here and there notifying of the need to cross into Canada via the checkpoints on the main roads, but they're often posted where you enter the unmaintained gravel road - not right at the border. These back roads were established long before we cared about crossing the Canadian border. If you happen to be camping or canoeing in the area for an extended period, it's very likely you'll get turned around and accidentally go north instead of south on one of these back roads and find yourself in Canada when you get back to driving. Furthermore since they're not really well maintained, it's possible you'll be taking turns to avoid washouts or other obstructions like fallen trees. You might stray into Canada just to reach your destination because the preferred route is out of service.
crooked-v 7y ago
You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that the entire border between the US and Canada has fencing or other barriers. Sometimes there's just a road with an easily-missed sign or plaque. For example: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-really-parts-of-the-US–Canada-border-that-are-unprotected https://www.quora.com/Are-there-really-parts-of-the-US–Canad...
rtkwe 7y ago
There are loads of spots along the border there where the US/Canada separation is only a grassy median [0]. So it's odd but not unbelievable. There's an even more extreme example to the east near Vermont where the border runs through individual buildings in the town of Stanstead [1,2] and there are just white lines on some streets you're not supposed to cross. [0] https://goo.gl/maps/XasmFG9Ms6FJUUsRA https://goo.gl/maps/XasmFG9Ms6FJUUsRA [1] https://goo.gl/maps/5aWrrN5TjuE8ennS7 https://goo.gl/maps/5aWrrN5TjuE8ennS7 [2] https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/stanstead-town-border https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/stanstead-town-bor...
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  Pretty funny that there's no street view for the laneways crossing the border in your second line. The SV driver was like "yeah nope, not going there."
  - daveslash 7y ago
    Honest question: How are people supposed to cross the border right there? Clearly there's a maintained and passable road there -- there's a stop sign, and then a white line where the border is. Are you supposed to have some pre-approval like TSA pre-check? Call ahead? Stop and wait for a Border Agent to come running out of the library? Go by better to ask forgiveness than ask permission?
    - beerandt 7y ago
      Self reporting is a thing for citizens. Some unmanned crossings have phonebooths that directly connect to an agent. Edit: I'm not sure that these still exist as a standalone thing. They may have been phased out after 9/11.
- YZF 7y ago
  The article does say "South of Vancouver". I'm from the Vancouver area and I can't say I've seen random unmarked roads crossing the border (there are some exceptions further east including some campgrounds that are in the US but are only accessible from the Canadian side). It's pretty easy to accidentally cross the border on foot though. Over the last few months there have been a lot more stories about the US/Canada border. Apparently a lot more people are getting barred arbitrarily from entering the US. I would normally expect these sort of incident should be resolved with a warning and returning to the other country. It seems for some reason someone decided to make an example out of these guys.
o_nate 7y ago
Not sure why the parent is being downvoted. More detail of what happened would surely be informative. Ideally including the perspective of the arresting officer. Why were they pulled over? Why did he suspect they were in the country illegally? Lots of unanswered questions here.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  They claim that they were stopped for crossing the border. > Michael turned onto an unmarked road and moments later, multiple police cars and Border Patrol agents appeared and told him: ‘You crossed an international border’, the family claim. From: https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/15/british-family-jailed-swerving-avoid-animal-ending-us-road-10919849/ https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/15/british-family-jailed-swervin...
wil421 7y ago
Check out the follow up: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50067575 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50067575
- efa 7y ago
  Thanks for posting that. Have to be careful not to rush to judgement on anything these days.

crooked-v 7y ago

I wonder how much money the US government is going to waste on arresting, holding, processing, and then deporting people who would have turned around and left if asked.

tantalor 7y ago
Wrong question... right question is, who is enriching themselves on this policy?
- _bxg1 7y ago
  I don't think it's anything so elaborate as that. I think it's simple sadism on the part of the thugs. They just like exerting power.
  - senderista 7y ago
    Can confirm, I was detained by the INS back in the 90s, with my US passport in hand, because I didn't look "American" enough. After holding me for a couple hours I was dismissed with no apology and no explanation, though a customs official helpfully explained that I "looked like a terrorist".
Rebelgecko 7y ago
According to another article, the Canadian border police wouldn't let them back in. It's a shady story— two of the "holidaymakers" had recently been denied US visas and were carrying $16,000 (USD!) in cash

_bxg1 7y ago

U.S. Border Patrol has become a government-sanctioned ring of thugs living out a power fantasy. Nothing more. Disgusting.

rolph 7y ago
there is the option for a border agent to inspect documents and persons/property like an entry inspection, but the problem occurs when the crossing is not a designated port of entry. They dont have to throw the book at them like they did but "r'spect muh athoritay !" seems to be the predominant mentality.
velox_io 7y ago
A grey area where you don't have any rights, if they don't like anything about you they can just put you on the next return flight. That's if they let you fly there in the first place. I know someone who was denied access because they had a criminal record from over a decade ago, even though it was a minor offence (no prison sentence). This is a UK citizen, so you can imagine how much more difficult it is for someone from a less favourable country. This is advice for Brits from the US Embassy: "Can you advise me if my arrest, caution, conviction will prevent me from traveling visa free and registering under ESTA? We cannot advise whether a traveler’s specific situation will have a bearing on their eligibility to travel visa free under the Visa Waiver Program. Our advice is that if you have ever been arrested, cautioned or convicted you apply for a visa." Cautioned! You don't even need to be convicted or even arrested for an offence.

aidenn0 7y ago

One thing I've noticed with the culture of law-enforcement in the US is that there seems to be a mental divide of people into bins of "criminals" and "not criminals."[1] People in the second bin get treated reasonably and people in the first bin get zero benefit of the doubt. By breaking the law, these travellers got sorted into the "criminals" bin and are now treated like shit. In addition, the high punitive nature of merely being arrested means that probable cause has replaced due process in our system. If a LEO treats you like a criminal (i.e. like human garbage) and has probable cause to do so, you are left with essentially no legal recourse. 1: There's also a 3rd bin of "law enforcement" but that is tangential to this article.

smacktoward 7y ago
It makes more sense when you realize the two bins are also labeled “not white” and “white.” (Which also explains the shock white people experience when circumstances result in them being sorted into the “not white” bin — suddenly they’re experiencing treatment from law enforcement they otherwise would never see.)
- ASalazarMX 7y ago
  Also US citizens and foreigners. God help you if you intersect more than one of the bad sides.
- eots 7y ago
  What racist drivel right here on HN.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  It is more subtle than that. In most cases a female PoC in business attire is more likely to be sorted into the "not criminal" bin than a white man with a typical "white trash" look. The racism comes in when you compare reactions to casually dressed white vs casually dressed PoC. And it gets dialed up even higher if the PoC is showing any ethnic styles. If you use a model of "Random officer X encounters random citizen Y" if citizen Y is a PoC, they are more likely to be prejudged into the "criminal" bin, but this is not the only factor (gender, inferred socioeconomic class, &c. will also play a role). This is very different than labeling the bins "not white" and "white"

tantalor 7y ago

> it has even damaged our relationship Might have a case for lawsuit arguing alienation of affections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alienation_of_affections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alienation_of_affections

wil421 7y ago

@dang Can we get this article flagged? If I wanted something like this I’d visit /news or /worldnews. Immigration and the political climate in the US is very hot right now. It’s not the reason I read HN, if you want your rage fix read elsewhere. > Hacker News Guidelines What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

_bxg1 7y ago
Significant geopolitical events have become a mainstay of HN, for better or worse. This one is a landmark example because it falls outside of the pattern people have (sadly) grown accustomed to. Edit: The second sentence was referring to the significance of the event (and why it would therefore be interesting to people on HN); I didn't mean to say the HN post itself was an outlier in some way.
- wil421 7y ago
  Looks like it was flagged. Thankfully others agreed with me instead of allowing it to become a mainstay like you suggested.