Harrassed at Canada Border (Afraid to go back)! (rental car, rental)
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Last month we drove from Detroit to Windsor On (Canada). We had no trouble getting across the border. Basically we were just waved in.
But on the way back going into Detroit (America) we sat in traffic for two hours and when we finally got up to the border check we were given the 3rd degree and asked the same questions over and over and over.
Finally the angry border guard decided he did not like our answers and escorted us like criminals to a secordary inspection area where they tore our car apart and made us wait in a waiting room for an hour. They also took our passports and did a full computer Internet background investigation on us.
Finally after an hour they gave us our passports and told us to go and had nothing else to say. What an angry group of people.
Can you account for any factors that may have raised their suspicion: age, attitude, long hair, foreign derivation, uncleanliness, more than usual baggage, strangers in the trunk, or wafting weed smell?
Last time I crossed there were trained dogs going into Canada, and a breeze through on the way back. I anticipated the opposite.
Now you know how most foreigners feel with their "first contact" with the US department of Homeland Security.
The trick is, tell the nice man with the badge and gun exactly what he wants to know the first time, and he won't make your day a living hell. Of course, coming into Canada, the Canadians don't have guns.
The only time we were searched was when we came back to the US. I cross a lot at the ND/MB border. It was raining and 10am. No one else in line or even around. I was in a Missouri rental car with a California DL and had been visiting relatives for only 2 days. Must have been a red flag because they sent us strait to the search barn. Or they were bored. Asked a couple of questions and sent me to the glass waiting room. Really questioned my S.O.. Searched the car and bags with the dog. Sent us on our way in about 45 minutes. They were very concerned about booze and large amounts of cash. We had neither.
I think border patrol and the TSA are the biggest bunch of idiots. It is scary to think these dopes are the front line for our security.
But the nature of the job only attracts idiots. No one with any reasonable intelligence and skills would sit there on post all day to ask silly little questions to people or stare at an xray screen.
Plus the uppers in charge make it such a cluster to even work, they completly remove all common sense from security operations and try to supplement it with some cute little standard operating procedures.
I think border patrol and the TSA are the biggest bunch of idiots. It is scary to think these dopes are the front line for our security.
But the nature of the job only attracts idiots. No one with any reasonable intelligence and skills would sit there on post all day to ask silly little questions to people or stare at an xray screen.
Plus the uppers in charge make it such a cluster to even work, they completly remove all common sense from security operations and try to supplement it with some cute little standard operating procedures.
The TSA a bunch of idiots? I think not. In 2002 Al Gore was pulled to the side at two different ariports to have his bags checked to make sure he wasn't a potential terrorist. Now would idiots do that?
The only time we were searched was when we came back to the US. I cross a lot at the ND/MB border. It was raining and 10am. No one else in line or even around. I was in a Missouri rental car with a California DL and had been visiting relatives for only 2 days. Must have been a red flag because they sent us strait to the search barn. Or they were bored. Asked a couple of questions and sent me to the glass waiting room. Really questioned my S.O.. Searched the car and bags with the dog. Sent us on our way in about 45 minutes. They were very concerned about booze and large amounts of cash. We had neither.
My God. What is this, Nazi Germany?
Our Founding Fathers would be spinning in their graves.
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. Asked a couple of questions and sent me to the glass waiting room. Really questioned my S.O.
. Searched the car and bags with the dog. Sent us on our way in about 45 minutes. They were very concerned about booze and large amounts of cash
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