Originally Posted by
Often1
BTW - All OP managed to do here is not teach anybody a lesson, just cost taxpayers (you & I) more money.
No, I think the OP did a great job standing up for himself and if I ever find myself in a similar situation (which is unlikely given my home airports), I'll do the exact same thing. If TSA has a problem with international passengers arriving on the sterile side of the airport, then it's TSA's and the airport operators joint problem to clean up and not my responsibility to submit myself to an invasive search from the Keystone Kops. If I'm in my home country and not getting on an airplane, and not under arrest by an actual LEO, I have a right to travel freely and go home, regardless of where I am. I give enormous credit to the OP for asserting himself. As I have said many times on this board, it's not necessarily about "teaching them a lesson" or "winning", it's about asserting your rights and not letting them be incrementally taken away by a bunch of clerks who find it more convenient to do it that way than to follow the Constitution.
And, as we can learn from all three stories discussed here, EVERYONE INVOLVED (cops, TSO's, supervisors, whoever) eventually admit that they cannot force people to submit to a search or detain them in these circumstances. So what's clearly going on here is that it's more convenient/cheaper to just submit people to searches and rather than contemplate the legality of it, the powers that be just presume that most Americans will willingly roll over and let it happen and hope to intimidate the rest who resist. I guran-damn-tee you that if more people resisted like the OP did, TSA and the airport would fix the situation in some way and standardize what happens in this circumstance. But, because so many Americans just don't care and think it's "kooky" to not go along with this nonsense, the thugs can get away with it.
Originally Posted by
Majuki
That's correct. The problem is the design of the terminals is such that the CBP FIS is airside. It is a byproduct of a bad terminal design, but it was from an era many years ago when all of those airports were hubs and most of the passengers were connecting anyway. Now at PIT 100% of the passengers on the DL flight are at their final destination. I imagine MEM and CVG still have some connecting traffic, but the only airport of the four where a vast majority of the travelers are still connecting would be ATL.
Yeah, I figured that out after a few clicks and reading some more. Nonetheless, like I said above, that's TSA's problem to fix, not mine for not wanting to be searched for no reason. Let people exit via a secure tram, dig a tunnel to the parking lot, have Scotty beam them out, but hell no, it shouldn't be considered to be "standard" to be submitted to a search just to exit the airport. Even if it's only incrementally moved into place, that's still a boot on the face.