KLouis

In my first visit to Burkina about 17 years ago, I was the first out of the plane. I give my passport to the first policeman (with three chevrons on his shoulder), he looks at it for ~2 minutes, hands it back to me and asks me to proceed to the next one (with three stars or stripes on his shoulder) who also looks at my passport for about 1-2 minutes and then waves me through to the third, and final one (again three chevrons). That guy just opens the passport and immediately says, in broken English and looking sort of angry, that my visa is not OK. I simply grab back my passport, go the the higher ranking officer before him and say in French that the third policeman would not agree with his evaluation of my passport and the visa. The guy comes with me to the third policeman and starts .....ing at him, how he dared say such a thing. He takes the stamp, stamps the passport and I go though. Colleagues who came after me told me that the line was stopped for at least 5 minutes until the poor policeman started looking like he was going to have a heart attack. Certainly he didn't get the bribe he was hoping for, perhaps he also was demoted to private...

CMK10

Mine was at YVR in 2012 and I created a FT thread that's very long because my experience was hardly unique it seems:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...-cbsa-yvr.html

Back then, I had wanted to go to Alaska for my birthday and I'd been wanting to fly Cathay Pacific. I decided to combine the two and booked a JFK-YVR flight on CX in First and then bought an Alaska ticket from YVR-SEA-ANC. When I arrived at YVR I explained this to the first agent I saw and he wrote some numbers on my customs declaration that indicated I was to be sent to secondary screening. Here is where the "fun" started.

Never in my life was I made made to feel more like a criminal. I explained what I was doing and showed my Alaska E-Ticket reservation to a female agent who promptly requested a supervisor. I was then told "empty your pockets and step away from the table". The two of them looked through all the pictures in my camera, then turned on my cell phone and proceeded to read through my emails and texts and scroll through the photos. Meanwhile, I was asked over and over again what drugs I took and what I'd been arrested for. The more I said "none and nothing", the more I said "I'm going to Alaska for fun" the more condescending and accusatory they became.

They saw I had an entry stamp from SDQ on 9/1/12 and an exit on 9/3.12 and told me "I've never heard of anyone staying only two days, why were you REALLY there?". They didn't believe that I'd gone because "it's there". They asked how much money I made and then chose to run a criminal background check on me. The whole ordeal took over 45 minutes and what upset me the most was I HAD DONE NOTHING WRONG. The more I explained why I was there, the less they believed me. I almost wanted to start lying so hopefully they'd believe me and let me go. When I asked what they expected to find in my phone they snapped "the Customs Act allows us to look through your phone so be quiet".

Himeno

Confirmation Bias. They assume one thing, ignore anything that doesn't fit their false belief and claim everything you say is a lie until you give them something that fits with their narrow assumption.

ashkale

And ofcourse all paid for by the OP in the inflated taxes and airport fees. Insane really and probably the only industry which can get away by treating its customers in such a manner.

Section 107

well, that is not the "industry" per se but rather its guvmint regumalators which are law enforcement. Not much the airlines can do about it if LE doesn't want to change its practices.

Hvr

Well as noted elsewhere they are trained to look for the unusual. By flying direct you're not following your normal pattern therefore you must be up to something nefarious.

GUWonder

Anything, everything and nothing as suspect, in the heads of the usual suspects in government employment, all at the same time..

Badenoch

Outside of the U.S.? None really.

Including the U.S.? Detained for three hours at a land crossing in Port Huron, MI, where I was questioned, searched and my car taken apart. I wasn't particularly concerned because I always give the car a once over before crossing.

I stayed calm throughout. They were very professional about it and were nice enough to put the car back together. No explanation, no idea why. I didn't ask and was just happy to be on my way.

nrr

I'm in GE (Global Entry) program. Returning to the US, early on the GE process, it spit out my entry slip with a BIG "X". Normally you just go to the next available agent, instead I was sent to the "special room" [the one with the whips and chains]. I was processed quickly, the agent thought it was fingerprint related; I got an email from GE to describe the problem I encountered--they want to keep the GE program "nice" for enrollees.
In reverse, back in the 70's I entered East Berlin from West Berlin via CHECKPOINT CHARLEY. I had a bag with lots of camera equipment [multiple lenses, camera bodies, movie cameras etc.], they asked me to open the bag, they glanced in and without even a pause, sent me on my way (into EB).^

CMK10

I had to go to that room my first time after getting GE. It was not much fun but thankfully I was done quickly.

Cassie55

Well, this WAS in the US, at DFW.

I was working for American Airlines in LON and it was several years ago. We had just switched to electronic authorisations for duty travel instead of tickets. (We never really had tickets but passes that looked a little like the old paper tickets)

I arrived at DFW and the immigration officer asked for my return ticket. I explained that we didn't have them anymore and that as staff I didn't have a confirmed booking back only an authorisation to travel (which stupidly I hadn't printed out).

He was convinced that I was going to try to stay in the US. I visited DFW at least once a month for a meeting with my manager and had 50+ entry stamps in my passport. I don't know why he thought I'd not leave on this trip. I had my AA employee ID.

I told him that if he found any AA agent (we were in an AA terminal) they would provide the printout of my travel auth but he refused to do that. He was very aggressive and intimidating trying to get me to admit I wanted to stay in the US. I gave him the number of my manager and said that he would confirm I was there for less than 48 hours.

None of that was good enough. He said I'd need to be interviewed further and then "probably deported".

I was sent to another room full of other people waiting to be interviewed. I waited for nearly 4 hours with no food or water (after a 10 hour flight from London I could have done with some water at the very least). I was concerned that I had missed the last flight back to London so what would happen to me overnight if I was going to be deported. Plus my line manager wouldn't have been impressed and I wasn't sure how it would affect my job as I needed to visit AA headquarters for regular meetings.

Eventually my name was called and when I got to the desk, the officer seemed confused as to why I was even there. I explained the situation and told him that any AA agent could provide a copy of the travel authorisation. He said that wasn't necessary and stamped my passport immediately.

So that was 4 hours waiting and 30 seconds being cleared.

My job involved encouraging tourism to the US. I lost enthusiasm after that

t325

That's a shame, when I entered NZ a few months ago at AKL, they seemed more concerned with what was coming into the country rather than who. Passport control was quick and painless, no line, a quick stamp and a "Welcome to New Zealand" and I was on my way. It was the line to get through customs and bag xray that was very slow moving.

My first time entering Canada, at the Port Huron crossing was probably the worst. We got chosen for the random check. Searched the car, questioned us for about 10 minutes, etc. Eventually they let us on our way, but it seemed a bit unnecessary.

Other than that, nothing too bad. Although I think I'd rather have 10 more of the random Canadian checks than deal with the customs line at CUN again. I use the term "line" term loosely. More like a hoard of people trying to funnel through 2 customs lines. The staff couldn't have been more pleasant (they want those gringo dollars I'm sure) but it was every man for himself.

Himeno

This sounds similar to the first time I entered at BOS.
Arrived on BA from AMS. My first stop in the US that trip was my friends wedding. CBP agent going along the front part of the line asking to see docs, checking to see forms were filled in before getting to the desks while asking basic "why are you visiting" type questions.
When I couldn't locate the wedding invite in my cabin bag, he pulled me to the front of the line, took my docs and went to one of the desk agents and said something.
Desk agent looked at my docs, tickets and itinerary, then sent me to secondary.
Got my checked bag and went to the little side room. Agent at the door took my passport and I sat down for around 30 mins before I was called up.
Agents then got quite pissed off that the primary agent had sent me down there for no reason and was wasting everyone's time.


My first entry at JFK, I had an agent that couldn't understand what a RTW trip looked like, why I had paid for such a trip in Yen and seemed to think that 1 JPY = 1USD and had thus paid over $600k for the trip. Then she went fishing, asking me the same 5 questions over and over for at least 10 minutes, attempting to get me to say that I couldn't afford my own holiday and was trying to find any reason not to let me in. The moment I said "credit card", she backed down.

quattro_formaggio

My worst experience was not with an immigration or customs officer. It was at FRA airport with an airline employee gate agent on an immigration issue.

Some background here:

I was officially immigrating to Canada. I am a visible minority from a developing country, and my spouse is a Caucasian and an EU citizen (but not German). We had already been living in Canada for a decade at that time on student and work permits. The airline employee was tasked with verifying the credentials of passengers traveling to YYZ, right at the gate before entering the aircraft. This is standard practice.

I got a surly agent who could have trounced the worst immigration officers anywhere in the world for the amount of rudeness, suspicion and racism he showed. I'm very confident it was racism - he was neither Caucasian nor of my own ethnicity but I couldn't place his origins. I would guess Arabic.

He wanted to know why I was married to a "white girl", especially one who was neither Canadian nor of my own nationality. He demanded to know why I had been holidaying in France prior to arriving in FRA. He made me so angry and flustered that I started giving him wrong answers by mistake, which of course made him even more suspicious. After a 20 minute barrage of questions, he let me go with a glare.

The Canadian Customs officers I later encountered in YYZ were borderline angelic in comparison.

I filed a complaint with the airline and received a vanilla response.

purduephotog

My passport was stolen about 3 hours before my flight to the US. Never talked, begged, and pleased so much in my life.

I think they took pity on me as each one up the chain in FRA kept letting me get closer and closer to boarding.

Got to the states, got pulled into one of the back rooms where they were doing very intense rapid questioning... And got stamped and sent in my way.

So a pretty pleasant experience compared to anything I've read here.