Originally Posted by
Tchiowa
In some US airports after you clear customs if you have a connecting domestic flight you can stay in the secured, domestic area. But if you don't have a ticket you can't.
Can you provide such an example? I don't think they exist any more. The reason is that in the Customs hall, you have access to your checked baggage, which can legally contain all kinds of things that are prohibited in the secure area for domestic departures: knives, handguns, ammunition, etc. The only way to ensure that you don't take such an item out of your checked bags and conceal it on your person before proceeding to domestic departures is for you to go through security screening.
There
used to be such examples, such as SEA south terminal. They would make you put your reclaimed checked bags that you just took through Customs bank on a conveyor and then re-reclaim them in the main terminal, in between which you were in the domestic departures secure area, but this doesn't exist any more in the post-9/11 world.