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U.S. citizen says he and his wife detained without explanation after returning from Canada (www.ctvnews.ca)

submitted 11 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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An American citizen says he and his wife were detained for hours by U.S. border agents when they returned to the United States after a short trip to Canada.

Bachir Atallah told CNN he and his wife, Jessica, were driving back into the U.S. Sunday evening after visiting family in Canada for the weekend when U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped them for a secondary inspection at the Highgate Springs checkpoint in Vermont.

Atallah, who is originally from Lebanon, said he was told to park his Range Rover and hand over his keys. When he asked the officer why, the officer placed his hand on his gun and told him to exit his vehicle, Atallah said. He said he was then handcuffed and led into a cell, where his belongings were confiscated. He said his wife was put into a cell across from his.

“Seeing my wife’s mascara running because she was crying, it was heartbreaking,” Atallah said. “It wasn’t humane.”

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[–] punkwalrus@lemmy.world 34 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I have seen some rhetoric about this, like "a few bad apples," but here's the problem with this and a lot of enforcement jobs.

Polite and decent people, on average, dislike confrontation. Thus, are not particularly attracted to these types of jobs.
This leads to an uneven amount who are fine with confrontation or even like it. Some of these people are sociopaths and psychopaths.
People who are psychopaths are actually very attracted to position where they have power over people.
US Customs are not regulated under the same laws as police or military. They can do what they want, when they want, with little to no discretion.

Are all US customs agents bad? No, of course not. But unchecked power is dangerous for anything. I can't tell you what percentage is or is not, because you can't measure a negative. But I see this in military, police, hired guards, and politics.

Many years ago, they cavity searched an underage girl at my local airport (Dulles) as she returned with her family from a vacation in Jamaica. They separated her from her family, did not tell her family, and searched all her holes "for drugs." They defended their actions by saying, "if we told people we didn't cavity search babies, they'd hide drugs inside babies." Essentially admitting, with no shame, they'd cavity search an infant. All in the name of "stopping drugs." Oh and the girl? US citizen, but dark skinned. The mistake they made was her dad was a powerful attorney and went public.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106hhrg66023/html/CHRG-106hhrg66023.htm

https://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/circle/raceprofiling/stories.racial.profiling.html

[–] Donebrach@lemmy.world 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I am going to say right now, the actual phrase is “a few bad apples spoil the bunch” and it is to literally say that yes, one or two massive assholes in any collective will eventually fuck shit up for everyone if not dealt with. I don’t know why the second part of that phrase stopped being acknowledged but it isn’t supposed to be just a hand wave to say oh it’s just one guy so let it go.

also go be clear, i am talking about ICE, not the american citizens illegally detained for daring to return to their county while being human.