Well, I like to rip on the TSA when they deserve it, which is quite often, and I will not be bound by your dictates of who can and cannot post to "your" thread. The power of Flyer Talk comes from the multiple perspectives of those who post here. How you could deem that the perspective of TSA "officers" who do or are told what to do (the "S"OP at a single airport) exceeds the value of those who post from multiple experiences over mutliple dragnets at multiple airports is beyond me. You seem to be forgetting there are probably many other than us, reading these threads to learn... and since duplicate, or overlapping posts are not appreciated, why would you think you could deny someone who hasn't yet framed or posed the question, the wisdom of multiple answers.


This is the part that makes my blood boil, binds me to respond, and worries me that the overstepping goons at DHS/TSA are trashing the American Constitution in their zeal to accomplish a goal, as yet undescribed. As a holder of 3 citizenships, I know only too well how even seasoned CBP officers can detour into irrelevant tangents as they try and discern the exact citizenship and visa situations of the more complex, yet still common, immigration law situations. The situation you describe is, to me, very likely a result of some unqualified, untalented TSA official directing his minions to demand visas of all who show non-American passports, in the hopes of making the big immigration catch. The perfect yet maddening TSA mix of arrogance and incompetence.
What happens to those with no visas, but who are still here legitimately? CDN for example? Diplomatic passports for example? Mutliple citizenship for example? Neither Scotty the Screener nor any of his multiple and redundant superiors are likely equipped to deal with these subtle realities of immigration law in action. Pretty clear to me that 3-1-1 is typically at and sometimes beyond the outer limit of their comprehension capability. The misaligned "Visa enforcement" problem is created when TSA moves (as it is doing at an ever accelerating pace) from determining who is a threat to aviation, based on what they are carrying, to areas such as who is legally in the country, a determination the TSA is woefully unqualified to get involved in.
The only bright spot in this? If they keep doing it, someone is bound to question the legality of their actions, and if the US constitution or supreme court precedent is still any type of a guide, TSA is likely to get spanked, maybe hard.