jlujan

A group of friends are traveling to Spain for a wedding, one of the guys has an outstanding 25 yr old felony warrant for failure to appear for possession of marijuana in the United States (he doesn´t travel to the US since), he has no problems or record in Canada, his passport is valid. Do spanish customs check his passport against US domestic state records? And also, its my understanding that some Canadian flights need permission form TSA and have to provide passenger records if its going to cross its airspace. Can they deny him boarding?

DragonSoul

No idea, but Spain is one of the countries that require passengers to provide advance passenger information (API) before they check in or they won't be able to fly.

garykung

AFAICT - RCMP should have been aware of the guy's outstanding warrant. The issue is because the guy is a Canadian, as a principal of sovereignty, Canada can't simply hand over a fugitive and extradite to other countries. That's why the guy is safe in Canada. However, once the guy leaves Canada, Canada has no further obligation stopping the arrest/extradition of its citizens.

So I would not suggest the said guy leaving Canada at all.

GUWonder

For valid Canadian passport users with a US state or US federal warrant for something like that and headed to Spain on say a YYZ-CPH/AMS-BCN routing, there is generally no problem getting into Spain that way. The exception would be if a notice is filed with Interpol over the matter or if the US got Canada to act over the matter, something that doesn't appear to have happened given the valid Canadian passport and some other factors that are almost certainly applicable.

Spanish passport control and Spanish authorities using APIS are not generally stopping people and denying travel/entry to the Schengen Zone/Spain by cross-referencing US warrants.

There are Canada-Europe flights that don't route over US airspace, if that is really a concern. Even as there are Canadian filings of manifests to US authorities for Canada-Europe flights that go over US airspace, the US ordering a flight diversion to get US state/federal warrant targets is not probable if the US hasn't tried to get the Canadian government to assist in going after the person.

schrodingerdog

In the Spanish border, passports are checked against national and international databases (europol and interpol). So unless he has an active Interpol red notice, everything should be fine. Also important to point out that Spanish border control operates a policy of heavy profiling. A Canadian western-looking male / female is highly likely to have the passport stamped with no questions and no scan, especially if the non-EU queue is long.