Originally Posted by
pa3lsvt
My lawyer told me the following with regards to expungement:
1) He would be able to file a motion (once eligible) for a relatively small fee.
2) The court would issue an order of expungement.
3) He would make a ton of money off me chasing down every agency that has a record of my arrest, serving the order, and verifying expungement. The list of agencies includes the following: district court (two - arraignment and preliminary hearing), county court, local police, state police, federal something, and likely more.
4) If even one of the agencies didn't comply with the order promptly, his only weapon was persistence. Funded by me.
His advice was to forget the expungement unless I was going to run for office some day or had some other special need to eliminate the records. The likelihood of everyone complying with the order was slim based on his experience.
And yes, my arrest came up at my GE and NEXUS interviews. Sounds like OP had someone that didn't properly expunge the records and is searched by CBP. The "no" was fatal to OP's chances at GE.
I also wonder if people with prior arrest record (no conviction) and /or expunged record obtained GE has had more "X" for secondary inspection than those who were never arrested in their life. That would defeat the purpose of GE, do you think. That would be an interesting data to collect.
I am also wondering if CBP has a record of each time they secondary a person and if that would be brought up in the GE interview.