It would be fantastic if there was a way to tell the good guys from the law-breakers with examination.

Border examinations are nothing more than showy attempts at mind-reading and crystal ball gazing. They filter people out based on stereotypes.

I suspect that anyone who wanted to cross a border for illegal activity could go through the work to make themselves appear to be mundane enough to pass, whereas people who are a bit more interesting are hassled because their travel plans don't fit some goober's idea of a "normal" travel profile.

So, shall we let everyone in, no questions asked?

Seems to work in France. I've never been asked a question at their borders. The examiner rarely even looks at me.

But, let's look at this another way. Does your state check people coming in from Nebraska? There are some bad people in Nebraska. Maybe there should be some checkpoints in your state's airports.

The state of Arizona stoped people and asks you for fruit when you drive in, are those the bad apples they are looking for? ;-)

As I typed in my early post, the majority of this article is fluff written to make you sympathize with the girl and feel sorry for her because "she is a good person". They always interview the neighbours of serial killers and they always say "Oh he was a nice guy and a good person. a bit quite, always did great stuff for Halloween and Christmas. We are shocked he had 20 people in his basement".

I don't care if OP thinks she is a good person. I just want the facts of this case. I would love to hear more if the media asks about it or the person posts more information, because right now we only know bits and pieces.
If Officer Knapp did not follow SOP then he should be dealt with otherwise we move on.

I have seen many a person asked questions in France BTW...

Ciao,
FH

Should inspectors be bullies, or treat people with respect and dignity? Or does that not jive with your law-and-order-at-any-cost mantra?

Regardless, a US government official may not review the contents of a US citizen's communications without a warrant or consent - since the US citizen was not presenting themselves at the border checkpoint, the inspector had no right to read the citizen's emails without asking permission.

Well I want to be sure the people entering my country are legitimate visitors and are not trying to circumvent the law. The best way, though far from fool-proof, is to interview a person who raises suspicions and examine his belongings. It's an inconvenience for legitimate travellers, but that's all part of travelling.

Perhaps thats why they are always so suspicious of me at PHL immigration, they ask why I am here and I say "to visit a friend" then I get
Is your friend an American citizen? "yes"
Where did you meet your friend? "on a chat group on the internet"........that one has gotten me a couple of trips to the back office,
then they always like to check my ticket, the amount of cash I have, the credit limits on my cards and what I do for a living.....eventually it dawns on them that 22 entry stamps on VWP means I must have gone home 22 times, and that I am fond of the husband, children, cats, job that I have at home so I get let in. I can see the sort of thing the OP describes happening based on my experiences which I find just irritating, must be frightening for someone not used to the little egocentricities

Isn't this what the visa process is for? Pre-screening these individuals? Once they have the visa, hasn't this already been addressed? The times I've needed a visa to visit a nation, once I arrived it was just a rubber-stamp because the approval process had already occurred.

I think you're going to have to get used to not knowing. :) Fact of life, you know.

In theory, yes. Unfortunately, visa refusals at a port-of-entry are common as people are frequently able to deceive visa officers abroad, with the deception only coming to light upon arrival at their destination.

Generally speaking, foreigners will get secondaried because they simply say too much. If asked why you're here, just say tourism. If you're traveling alone and say you're coming to see a friend, that's an alarm for CBP. Maybe you're coming here to get married or something that would cause you to stay. If you feel the need to say anything other than tourism, say you're coming to see a brother or something. IMHO that's too much info, but saying you're coming in to see a friend is begging for a secondary.

Oh, and when they secondary 90-pound Thai women, they aren't thinking she's a terrorist. They think she's coming here to maybe hook and will staying for a while to do so. Or just coming in to live illegally - it happens all the time. There are a lot of illegal aliens in the country who didn't hop the fence from Mexico. They come in on tourist visas or are from tourist-waiver countries, and the just decide to stay.

That's pretty bad advice, unless you really are coming to see your brother. The last thing a foreign national would want to do is get caught up in his own web of lies with an Immigration officer. It's asking for trouble.

Your statement of the law as it relates to a border crossing is 100% wrong. Customs has the right to inspect anything being brought into or being taken out of the United States.

Except.. there have been reports of border guards bullying people into giving their email passwords at the checkpoint. If your email is on a server online it is not being presented at the checkpoint.

With all due respect, while these situations are anomalies, there is sufficient evidence that they do occur.

I have personally been a victim of one of these "interrogations" by US border officials and unbelievable as it may sound, I left the interrogation room (at a Canadian PFI station no less) with a torn shirt and blood dripping down the side of my face because I refused to falsely admit to some allegations made and the immigration officer lost his temper with me. I was addressed with racial slurs ranging from "towelhead" to "sandniger" and told that my passport must be fake because "all you fucckers from that part of the world are named Mohammed or Singh or some other fuked up name". Did anything come out of it? It took over 3 years and a lot of lobbying before I got an apology from the State Department. Due to my line of work, the advice from my lawyers was to let the matter drop as a public airing of grievances would only result in future problems. So I did, but to this day I refuse to set foot in the United States again.

I have also had the chance to read the official account of that incident, and some of the lies and coverups in there make me sick to the stomach. There are comments attributed to me that I never made, documents that are referred to that state completely different things than are stated in the report and even people that they claimed to have spoken to who swear that they were never contacted. Conveniently, the video recording of the interrogation was also determined to be unavailable due to a faulty machine on the day in question.

The only thing that surprises me here is that they finally granted her entry. Most people aren't that fortunate.