This misses the point. The issue isn't whether the border crossing checkpoint is at the literal line separating the countries. I didn't mean "at the border" in

This misses the point. The issue isn't whether the border crossing checkpoint is at the literal line separating the countries. I didn't mean "at the border" in the sense of "one foot in Canada and one in the US"; I meant "intending to enter the United States from Canada". (That's what the lawyer quoted in the article says: "It is incumbent on CBP to determine when someone is actually trying to enter or leave the country.") Nobody cares that the Canada border crossing is a few hundred yards away from the actual 49th parallel. People do care that someone who obviously didn't mean to cross the border at all was detained for interacting with customs and forgetting ID, when they were making a good-faith effort to obey the customs laws. The fact that nobody expects to be detained for the equivalent of a DMV trip is a good indication that this was "unreasonable" per the plain meaning of the word. Maybe case law says otherwise. But ask a "reasonable" person on the street what the appropriate response of a customs agent to someone (citizen or not) who forgot their ID to take care of some bureaucratic hurdle on a package is, especially when the agency was supposed to be aware of the person's arrival (note the mention of the email in the article). That's what I care about. I should mention, by the way, that the pedestrian lane at a US-Canada border crossing typically has a queue on the Canada side, and the border agent calls groups in one-by-one, just as at an airport. I have no idea how someone just trying to interact with customs, who drove up and parked their car on the US side, could be confused with someone trying to enter the US. It's worth looking at a map of the Peace Bridge [1]. This isn't a checkpoint some ways away from the border; it's a road with one way into the US, through the checkpoint (and the Niagara River in between the two countries!) Unless you have a flying car, there is no way you could end up with a car on the US side without having already gone through border security. The incompetence itself is ridiculous. [1]: https://goo.gl/maps/PTm1xCv6aEEaGpWY9 https://goo.gl/maps/PTm1xCv6aEEaGpWY9