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I Was a U.S. Diplomat. Customs and Border Protection Only Cared That I Was Black
- justinclift 6y agoSounds like installing a dashcam (or several) would have been useful here, for better capturing the interactions.
- stevespang 6y agoHeads should roll at CBP, but never will in this gestapo agency.
- glitchc 6y agoNorth America’s racist roots are showing. Perhaps it’s time for immigrants to consider more welcoming destinations.
- vidanay 6y agoShit.. I'm a middle age white male, and I'm thinking about more welcoming destinations.
- supahfly_remix 6y agoWhat countries do you suggest?
- AbrahamParangi 6y agoWhere exactly are these more welcoming destinations?
- badrabbit 6y agoI hear antarctica has unexplored land melting away /s
- haunter 6y agoinb4 you say Japan
- nborwankar 6y agoWhat about those of us who arrived decades ago are now settled with families and children who were born here are proud to call ourselves American citizens? We never imagined even 5 years ago an America like this and are questioning our life choices.
- qppo 6y agoAmerica was like this five years ago too.
- rich_sasha 6y agoRacism is awful and ubiquitous. What I find terrifying about America, and stories like this, is that it is aimed at compatriots.
- jdmg94 6y agoAnd that's on a US Government official, the ones who are not may end up in a cage...
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoNo, that isn’t what is happening at all.
- jokethrowaway 6y agoTbh it's not that different in Europe. If you are dark skinned and it looks like you may be part of the ethnic group that causes trouble around your area, you will be stopped. Since I was 16 I was asked for documents and pulled over so many times, it wasn't even funny. I can't say I blame officers, though: I don't think recognising patterns is racism. I'm more pissed at people that look like me and contribute to the majority of crime. I hate the police sarcasm and bad treatment though. I think it's too easy to have unlimited money from the taxpayers' pocket without having to lift a finger to actually fight crime. I remember this one time, they stopped next to me in their car and just asked in between laughs "so, which country would you be from?". I replied the name of a small town nearby in the country's native accent and they immediately went "ohh, sorry sorry" and left immediately to poke at someone else. Apparently I wasn't part of their personal zoo of illegal immigrants to make fun of and ignore. That's probably the best argument I have for decriminalising victimless crimes and not having all power centralised into a public police but split into private entities with a Profits and Losses sheet.
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoIs there a reason to doubt the official explanation of a name collision? This is not uncommon. A case of someone getting even worse treatment, including strip searches. He was white. https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2010/10/08/acton_man_repeatedly_mistaken_for_convict_with_same_name.html https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2010/10/08/acton_man_repe... A white woman sharing a name with a black male convict even had issues: https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Technology-issue-at-border-results-in-mistaken-572632.php https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Technology-issue-at-... There is often a common theme reported in these experiences. Customs cannot seem to properly “remove” flagged individuals. Or if they do, something keeps re-adding them. It sounds like many different source databases synchronize with each other and it’s difficult to prevent bad data from being reintroduced.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoIs there a reason to doubt the official explanation of a name collision? The fact that the saga went on for months at the same border post despite complaints? People like to distinguish between incompetence and malice but there is not much point in it; in either case the outcome shows that people in charge are not capable of performing their duty and should be relieved.
- 0xcde4c3db 6y agoAlso, what's the point of SENTRI if not to obtain a more reliable and detailed database entry? Shouldn't that information somehow take precedence over a too-broad query of some other database? Even if the official explanation is true as far as it goes, something is seriously broken here.
- foogazi 6y agoExactly- with Sentri you have an id number that has your personal and vehicle info How would the automated system scan the card, the face and the license plates and then do a name lookup?
- wittyreference 6y ago
- squibbles 6y agoFrom what the author wrote, it seems likely she was flagged as a person of interest. Perhaps her name was similar or identical to an alias used by someone else, or perhaps she looked very similar to someone on a watchlist. Automated systems can exasperate the problem of persecuting the innocent. For anyone who thinks they are able to make an automated system for law enforcement that does not provide false positives, I strongly recommend you think twice. For anyone interested, the author has a gofundme page. [0] [0] https://www.gofundme.com/f/A-Love-Letter-To-Durham-North-Carolina https://www.gofundme.com/f/A-Love-Letter-To-Durham-North-Car...
- dwd 6y agoThat doesn't explain being pulled over before they have checked her documents unless they are using a licence plate scanner to ID her beforehand. Doesn't sound likely due to the questions about whether it is her car - or those questions are therefore blatent harrassment. I'd recommend Gladwell's last book 'Talking to Strangers' about how preconceptions and cognitive biases shape our interactions and how things can quickly derail as a result. You could put a spin on their motives that it is a prejudgement of her as a person of interest - but that then becomes an issue of individual training or a systemic failure in the whole force to not let that happen.
- ncmncm 6y agoI would never recommend a book by Gladwell, anymore, since I learned more about him. "I don't write about what's true, I write about what's interesting."
- dwd 6y agoThat is unfortunately the case for most journalism and even scholarly research. If you treat much of what he writes as anecdotal fluff pieces you won't be disappointed.
- squibbles 6y agoAn encounter with law enforcement is not necessarily a straightforward exchange of facts. If someone is under suspicion, then law enforcement personnel will ask questions or give commands to see how a suspect reacts.
- air7 6y ago> There were only a few consular officers of color in Juarez. They, too, had been pulled into secondary inspection a few times at the border, but CBP officers seemed to be more aggressive with me, probably because I had begun regularly to ask to speak to a manager whenever I was pulled to secondary inspection. She might have just gotten on their "annoying-persons" list. If this was indeed race driven than the other black officers would have a similar track record and it would have made a much more damning post with their combined experiences. The fact that she doesn't mention their stories leads me to believe that her experience was much worse than the other black diplomats. Be it incompetence (a recurring glitch in the computers) or malice (the guards were harassing her personally) it doesn't seem to me to be clearly caused by racism.
- perl4ever 6y agoAuthorities everywhere will harass people they consider troublemakers, but that doesn't suggest at all that they aren't racially biased in who they consider troublemakers.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoShe might have just gotten on their "annoying-persons" list This is the Juarez-El Paso border crossing, not a reenactment of "The Comedians" with Richard Burton and Liz Taylor. First rule of government interaction: if it can be used against them it can also be used against you. Police shitlists should never be used as an explanation, rather they should serve as a call for savage consequences.
- tehwebguy 6y agoWhat a deeply sick culture at CBP to allow & protect this level of incompetence, malice and/or racism. I doubt that org can be fixed at all.
- phobosanomaly 6y agoThis is my own personal experience, and who knows maybe it's not at all the experience of others. I used to cross at San Ysidro frequently, and would get pulled into secondary maybe 1/4 of the time. This is extremely common if you're crossing the land border alone, and you don't 'look Mexican.' Even if you don't get pulled into secondary, they're extremely unpleasant to deal with. I don't think I ever came across a border patrol agent during that time who didn't appear to be actively going out of their way to be mean. They don't even pretend to be welcoming or polite. They are there to make you feel small and under pressure, and in that process they are looking for any excuse to pull you into secondary. They know that you have zero power in that situation. Just try using the bathroom after sitting in the border line for 3 hours and then getting pulled into secondary and sitting in your car for an hour waiting for them to show up with a drug dog. The Mexicans will sort of do something similar. I've been flagged by their secondary before, but they are always extremely polite. Even the soldiers in fatigues with FALs are pretty nice guys in my experience. I think there is something in the training and recruitment of US CBP that is incredibly broken. As an American, everytime I cross the border back into my own country I am deeply ashamed.
- fred_is_fred 6y agoCan someone correct this if it's just conjecture? I've always been told that they are making you feel small and under pressure specifically to look for reactions that might indicate you are hiding something. I am not condoning this, just wondering if it's true.
- phobosanomaly 6y agoI've been looking around. I can't find a specific source or training document that would indicate it so far. I think it's a really interesting question. I do have an anecdote that may help shed some light. I was coming back from dinner in Tijuana one evening with a friend who happened to be asian. We pulled up to the border crossing and handed over our passports. After calling my friend a 'banana,' the agent then asked us why we would visit a 'garbage dump' when we could go to Balboa Park instead. We were totally shocked. I got the feeling with many of the CBP agents I interacted with that they had a really distorted image of Mexico. Thus, anyone who goes there and isn't from there is probably up to no good. And if you're from there.......... Edit: I'm stereotyping based on my own experiences. Again, maybe I've had bad luck. I don't mean to imply that all CBP agents are bad folks.
- sys_64738 6y agoCBP are the most unfriendliest border agents I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Contrast that with the likes of Canadian and Irish border people who are outstanding I'm my experience.
- throwaway9d0291 6y agoIt's not just the agents, as a foreigner, it's CBP as a whole. I lived in the US for 3 years on an E-3 visa (like a weird H1B that's only for Australians). I wasn't eligible for any of the expedited entry procedures like Global Entry since I was an Australian without a green card. The journey starts in the foreign airport. Did you know that the US has its own security in many foreign airports? After you've already been through the airport's own security and are waiting at the gate, just prior to or even during boarding, the US can have you pulled aside and searched thoroughly once more. They'll make you take off your shoes, jackets, go over you with a wand, unpack all of your carry-on luggage on a table and then make you pack it again. This happened to me on 3/4 international flights returning back to the US from Europe (France, Germany). Then, once I arrived in the US, I had to go through the "foreigner that needs to see a human" line. Have a look at the wait times for that line, as reported by CBP [0]. I ran an average for October 2019 at SFO and the _average_ wait time was 26 minutes but depending on when you arrived, it could be hours. In my experience ~45 minutes was the norm (I chose unlucky arrival times I suppose). When you get to the human, they basically treat you like a criminal. They take your fingerprints, make you look into a camera for biometrics and interrogate you about why a foreign peasant deserves to enter the utopia that is America. On each visit after renewing the visa, you also have to carry a massive pile of documentation with you (documentation that was already submitted to the State Department as part of the visa application). And then, after immigration, you have to go through customs. Normally customs isn't so bad but every now and then you can get pulled aside for a baggage search. This means being told to stand in a line for easily an hour without any indication of why, no access to food or drink and of course you can't use your phone either. I've travelled fairly widely and the US border really is the worst I've had the misfortune of crossing. When I enter the US the whole CBP process gives a sense of dread and makes me feel like a huge pile of weights is being dumped on top of me. When I leave the US it's like I'm finally free and returned to civilization. Even "oppressive" countries like Russia and Turkey feel better than the US. [0]: https://awt.cbp.gov/ https://awt.cbp.gov/
- losingbraincell 6y agoread the whole article waiting for the reason they cared she was black, maybe a smoking gun, felt like a detective piece. was dissapointed i guess its just an axiom to a ethnonarcissist
- tehwebguy 6y agoYou are waiting for someone at CBP to explicitly say “it’s because you are black”? Anything short of that means it wasn’t racism?
- thomaslord 6y ago> read the whole article waiting for the reason they cared she was black The reason they cared she was black is that they were racist... In one of the interactions she documented, the CBP officer told her he knew "what drug smugglers look like" and said "you know what I mean".
- masonic 6y agoWouldn't having traveled extensively (non-employment travel) in both hemispheres over the preceding two years get anyone added scrutiny?
- BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y agoCar registered in NC, while living in Texas, is sufficiently suspicious, a smuggler won't bother to change license plate.
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 6y agoBest to be subservient and compliant in all dealings with CBP. My bet is that the agents didn't like her attitude. Once that happens, it's time to find another crossing and change your plate - that's the first thing the cameras feed into the computer system. That might work better for the ordinary schmoo than a special pass holder. Living close to the border I cross often to pick up parcels. For some reason I have yet to fathom, CBP often asks exactly what I'll be taking back to Canada;so I tell them without asking why they are interested. They have the power to make my life miserable, even bar me from the US where I have family. I think it best to humour whatever bee they have in their bonnet at the time. Mind you they may be following whatever directives are in effect at the time. I've been questioned about certain items several times in a row and then they come up with something else. Canada customs is usually friendlier, but can get shirty every now and again.