TSA dossiers
 

sbm12 thank you for the information on obtaining dossiers...I will send out those letters tomorrow!

The codes I have seen used (San Francisco) are the number that says how many people the card represents and an A if you get an agriculture inspection. The number gives the door-checker a very quick way to know how many people to let out per card received to catch tailgaters.

Based on some of the questions you have listed, perhaps there is someone with a name similar to yours - or someone who shares your name - that they are looking for.

Every time I got pulled aside during the period I was flagged, most of the questions dealt with my identity and to a lesser extent finances (what do you do for a living, who do you work for, could I see your business card, etc).

As far as identity questions, where do you live, who do you live with, where have you lived in the past. To an extent, some of the financial type questions could fall under the identification category.

Given my credit file was pulled by the child support division (I have no children) from a law enforcement agency in Michigan that leads me to believe they were looking for someone with a same or similar name. If it was close enough for the police to pull my credit file, I'm thinking this same info may have been accessed by US Immigrations and flagged me each time I re-entered to make sure I was not this person.

When the consistent secondaries stopped, I figure they either found who they were looking for or that I simply had entered enough times, gone through secondary with negative results each time, that US CBP simply concluded I was not the person they were looking for.

When I spoke with law enforcement up in Michigan where my credit report was pulled, they removed it and claimed it was a clerk / data entry error. I don't buy this because my father's credit report was also pulled by them. We share a middle and last name - other than that, significantly different SSNs, different addresses, employers, telephone #'s etc. Another clerk error?

To me, it seems like they were data mining to locate someone and didn't have full/accurate info, as such the secondaries during re-entry were a part of that dragnet.

Check your credit files and conduct some searches to see if someone with a similar name is perhaps wanted. Very frustrating, but I'm glad I no longer have to deal with it.

Hi,
To agree with some upthread posters, it's more than likely that you have a similar name to someone who is wanted on an outstanding warrant. It happens to me, as I have a good old fashioned WASP name. Once was the full bore secondary through immigration, where they explained to me it's because of the name, now it's just secondary through customs, which takes a little more time. I have some misdemeanors in my past, and am probably going to go through the DHS dispute process soon.
Cheers.

CHILD porn. :eek: (Not just regular porn since that's all legal and good. :) )

That's really funny they would be searching for jpg files, or for that matter asking about them. Makes me wonder what kind of things they are looking for if they can't seem to find toothpaste 9 out of 10 times.

I was flagged for 5 years. Supposedly, I matched the criteria for an international jewelry smuggler :eek:

Then all stopped and has been fine since. I always allowed lots of extra time between entrance and my next flight after missing a flight because of the extra attention.

And no, I wasn't smuggling jewelry.

Whoah. This thread is not about TSA. It's about Customs and Immigration... different (and typically a more professional) animal entirely... (Although you wonder how long, given TSA's recent dragnet creep into the ID/BP check world, until they start reviewing file structures on laptops to ensure no defragging of drives is required.) :rolleyes:

Are they allowed to ask your SSN?

Sorry for the long quote but this is *exactly* what happened to me in every regard.

Wouldn't it be funny if travelers clothed bondage pics of people in CBP uniforms on their hard drives? :D

Yes they are, mostly for identification purposes. If you're filling out the FINCEN 105, then you need to provide it, if you have one.

Regular porn is all legal and good inside the US. I'm not sure that CBP is required to allow it through the border, especially if it lacks a 2257 notice.