Tourist Permanently Barred from US for Smoking Marijuana in CO
Mar 17, 2017, 5:53 pm
#1
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Tourist Permanently Barred from US for Smoking Marijuana in CO
From KPCC:
Weed-smoking tourist, caught between fed and state laws, gets barred from US
Excerpts
Excerpts
***
At the airport, a CBP officer dug through her belongings.
"Finally, he took my phone...He didn’t ask for permission," she said. "I didn’t have any password on my phone, so [he] just unlocked my phone and started to view everything inside of it. He viewed my message, my contacts, my e-mails, my social media. He also view my pictures on my cell phone. And he was very interested in Colorado."
He asked her about why she'd gone there, where she stayed and what she did. And while the officer was looking through her pictures, he came across images of glass pipes and jars of marijuana, taken inside of a recreational pot shop. He narrowed his inquiries, asking her where she'd taken the photos and whether she'd ever used cannabis. "I said, yes. I tried marijuana in Colorado," she said. "I went to the store. I pass my passport to the store. They say to me, OK, no problem, you can go inside of the store, you can buy whatever you want to buy...and no problem. You are OK. Go to your home. Have fun."
***
She was then moved to another room and held her for 15 hours. When officers came to get her they told her that she was being denied entry to the U.S. and being sent back to Chile. She was also barred from returning, indefinitely.
***
At the airport, a CBP officer dug through her belongings.
"Finally, he took my phone...He didn’t ask for permission," she said. "I didn’t have any password on my phone, so [he] just unlocked my phone and started to view everything inside of it. He viewed my message, my contacts, my e-mails, my social media. He also view my pictures on my cell phone. And he was very interested in Colorado."
He asked her about why she'd gone there, where she stayed and what she did. And while the officer was looking through her pictures, he came across images of glass pipes and jars of marijuana, taken inside of a recreational pot shop. He narrowed his inquiries, asking her where she'd taken the photos and whether she'd ever used cannabis. "I said, yes. I tried marijuana in Colorado," she said. "I went to the store. I pass my passport to the store. They say to me, OK, no problem, you can go inside of the store, you can buy whatever you want to buy...and no problem. You are OK. Go to your home. Have fun."
***
She was then moved to another room and held her for 15 hours. When officers came to get her they told her that she was being denied entry to the U.S. and being sent back to Chile. She was also barred from returning, indefinitely.
***
Mar 17, 2017, 6:02 pm
#2
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If they hadn't suspected of her being a potential immigration risk due to the romantic relationship and substantial visit history, the device check and Colorado thing may have never come up.
She seems to have got caught up in the consequence of having a federal system after being flagged due to the nature of her visit and prior travel history. The marijuana use history was the knock out punch for the CBP already looking for reasons to exclude her.
It sounds like she has her phone camera set up to record GPS coordinates for the photos and name the geographic location of the photos. Less information on devices being taken across the borders would have probably been helpful.
She seems to have got caught up in the consequence of having a federal system after being flagged due to the nature of her visit and prior travel history. The marijuana use history was the knock out punch for the CBP already looking for reasons to exclude her.
It sounds like she has her phone camera set up to record GPS coordinates for the photos and name the geographic location of the photos. Less information on devices being taken across the borders would have probably been helpful.
Mar 17, 2017, 8:12 pm
#3
Join Date: Sep 2016
Posts: 245
There are lots of visa holders and LPRs with weed cards. Is it paranoid to wonder if the Feds could start looking at dispensary records to find people to deport?
Possibly a little off topic, but this could signal the beginning of a federal crackdown on citizens as well.
Possibly a little off topic, but this could signal the beginning of a federal crackdown on citizens as well.