Two weeks ago, I encountered an unusual situation upon disembarking at MIA from SDQ. Upon deplaning and entering the rather narrow jetbridge, I was startled to notice ten uniformed and serious-looking Customs Service officers, packing heat as is standard practice, five stationed on each side of the jetbridge facing towards the opposite wall.

The setup forced passengers to navigate the narrow space between these guys to get into the terminal. After running this gauntlet, there were two more plainclothes officials at the top of the jetbridge.

Any theories as to what their objective was, other than freaking out the entire planeload of pax?
The

You guessed it right....

I got the same treatment at LAX getting off a LanChile flight from South America.

As I rounded the corner of the jetway......and as I was the 2nd-3rd one off the plane, out of nowhere jumps a uniformed customs agent who says to me...."Sir we are testing a new dog and I would like to put this package on your luggage to see if he hits on you".

I said sure...no problem. The dog walked right past me BTW....like I figured it would. This was just an attempt at profiling to see if "I" was going to be spooked by the whole thing...thus warranting a secondary inspection.

[This message has been edited by Carioca Canuck (edited 02-08-2002).]

I have encountered this multiple times when
boarding flights TO South America (mainly Lima and Santiago), but never had it happen
upon deplaning in the U.S. FROM a South American flight. Since they already have the opportunity to nab anybody they want during passport control or customs, I really don't see the point of sending the S.W.A.T. team to greet the plane like that.


[This message has been edited by dogcanyon (edited 02-08-2002).]

[This message has been edited by dogcanyon (edited 02-08-2002).]

I have frequently noticed at least a couple of Customs officials at the jetbridge when coming off of flights from "suspect" destinations (i.e. the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Columbia, etc), presumably to give these pax extra scrutiny prior to their entering the general mix of presumably lower-risk holiday makers returning from Caribbean vacations and inbound pax from Europe.

What put this situation in a different category, however, was the sheer number of officers (12 in total) and what appeared to be an intentionally intimidating demeanor. The logistics of the set-up were such that you didn't see the two other customs guys eyeing you until you breathed a sigh of relief after making it through the line-up.

I'd wager they were targeting a particular pax on your flight who'd been profiled in advance. They can't meet every flight with that sort of manpower.

Speaking of jetway intimidation, the story reminds me of the time I was boarding a BA flight at LHR T4 a few years ago... at the head of the gate you produce your BP and passport... well, the BA gate agent made a slow, solemn show of taking each passenger's passport in hand, scrutinizing it, then holding it up to show the photo page to two lumpy, unsmiling men in nondescript suits standing on the other size of the passenger queue. Each time he did so the two men would stare at the passport and the passenger, then gravely shake their heads "no." Whereupon the pax was allowed to board.

I never did find out what the heck that was all about but it was obviously some sort of theater, staged for some specific person's benefit. And so was your incident, I'm sure.

We had it happen on a flight from London to Kennedy in December, there were two customs agents right outside the door to the plane asking everybody to show passports as we were getting off the plane.

Hi there,
I've expereienced this arriving at LHR on a couple of UA flights. As mentioned already, it seems as if they're looking for something rather specific.

The time I've been most freaked out was arriving in LHR T4. My bag had been damaged and getting that sorted took about 10-15 minutes. So I came out by myself to be confronted by a barrage of newspaper photoographers and TV camera crews all photographing and filming me! Now that's a much bigger shock than customs officers I can assure you.
Anyway, after about 5 seconds (it seemed MUCH longer) someone shouted "No - not him" and all the lights went off. I was rather intrigued about the fuss so I asked one of the camera crew what was going on. Apparantely, some stupid English girlie had been caught smuggling drugs out of India and was being deported back to England after a while. She was due to arrive about when I did and the cameras were all a little trigger happy!

Jason
(Who leads a nice semi-anonymous life)

This has happened to me at LAX when arriving from international destinations. Now, I don't know whether one would consider Australia and New Zealand as suspicious departure points but that's a different issue...

I was 3rd off the plane ATL-FLL and they had a drug dog at the jetway door.
After passing by, I stood off to the side to watch. The usual suspects, gang types with lots of jewelry, passed with no problem. Then the dog sat down when a 50ish DL Medallion member in a suite passed by.
The plane clothes cops came out of the crowd and took him to the side. In the terminal, they gave him a quick search and found about a joints worth of pot in his shaving kit.

Sometime within the past year on an Asian (HKG or NRT, can't remember) arrival into JFK, the purser announced prior to deplaning that all pax should have their passports in hand as they exited the aircraft. I was one of the first off, but the immigration/customs people did not seem interested when I offered them my PP. I'm quite sure that they had a good idea who they were looking for.

Obviously, we're not wasting enough money on "security" and now we need to find more ways to continue to do so.

------------------
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither." - Ben Franklin

this kind of heavy handed treatment is more and more common at US Costoms in YVR...looking for drug contraband is what I was told...

had the same thing happen to me after a trip to sgn . 2 times we were met with customs agents after de-plaing and once with the dogs,2or 3 dogs, also asked to hold passport out. i can ubderstand it to a point, but sometimes i wonder if it really helps?

Funny you should say that -- I flew out of SDF a few weeks ago and there must have been 20 security people there. 2 sitting down checking IDs before you get in line. One at the front of the line directing you to one of 4 open screening lines. Then the usual assortment of screeners, yellers ("TAKE EVERYTHING OUT OF YOUR POCKETS. TAKE YOUR LAPTOPS OUT OF YOUR BAGS"), wanders (is that a word?), supervisors...so many people. Do I feel safer? No.