I was a passnger in a car that got stopped on the 8 near El Cajon last February. 3 people in the car... 2 of us were detained in the car (with a CBP officer standing outside) for about 25 minutes, while the third was escorted away for questioning. None of us had our passports (we didn't need them).
Driver - caucasian male, born and raised in Southern California, resident of Los Angeles, US Citizen, clear American accented English.
Pax 1 (me) - caucasian male, born in Boston, brought up across the US and Caribbean. Resident of Miami at the time, US Citizen, clear American accented English.
Pax 2 - caucasian male (albeit tanner than I), born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Resident of Los Angeles, US Citizen, clear PR-Spanish accented English.
3 US Citizens in a car, traveling lawfully within the borders of their own country. Guess who got detained and had a CBP officer repeatedly ask them where in Mexico (then Guatemala, then Ecuador, then Colombia, then basically everywhere else in Latin America) they were from and how they got into the US?
This is absolutely ridiculous. This isn't a country that I'm proud to be a citizen of.
This seems like you were actually pulled over by CBP, not stopped a checkpoint.
I thought in order to pull a car over they had to have some level of suspicion that an illegal was being transported.
Have you tried to file a complaint?