Originally Posted by
alexmt
It's not baseless, it's a true story ...
... it would be incredibly unreasonable for them to base Global Entry on arrest records alone. Furthermore, the Constitution guarantees everyone a right to a fair trial and to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
So one story about your friend (who was clearly mistreated) means what to this thread? For what it's worth, in my case the police had probable cause to make an arrest. Sort of - it was based on crap police work and that's why I came out the other side of the justice system without any finding or admission of guilt. (My favorite words in all of legal jargon: nolle prosequi.)
Nobody is denied GE based on
arrests alone. In fact that's exactly what the informative posters in this thread are telling OP, myself included.
What CPB needs to know, once they've seen evidence of a past arrest, is whether or not one was adjudicated with a finding of guilt (or a plea of nolo contendre or other "guilty" equivalents). If CBP can't see that based on the information they have, the burden is on the applicant to prove they were never found guilty. In my case they saw that 5 of the 6 charges were dismissed but had no record of the 6th. One phone call on my part and I had the records I needed in hand for that last one.
On the other hand, if you lie during your interview the odds of a denial shoot right up since the whole program is about being declared a "Trusted Traveler" - kind of hard to expect CBP to trust someone that was discovered lying to the interviewing officer.