I arrived from Mexico back to the USA this week. I'm a US Citizen and went to the US Citizen immigration line. After waiting in a very slowly-moving line for a few minutes, a woman came and stood next to the line without making contact with any of us in the line. I asked the person in front of me "Is she in our line now?" and he said "I guess so."

I went through immigration and they wrote three letters on my form...CXL maybe. As I entered customs, they selected me for a "random" audit which took a good 10-15 mins. The agent was typing everything from the blue form into the computer and asking me lots of questions about where I work etc and even asked for a business card. He then thoroughly examined my suitcase. I did not fit the profile of others in this area...everyone else appeared to be Mexican citizens with large backs. I am a caucasian businessman with a boring old rollaboard suitcase and a laptop bag.

The whole thing left me unsettled - as if I'd been pulled over for speeding - when I don't think I did anything wrong. I can't but wonder if that code the agent wrote meant "disgruntled passenger, check this guy out." I asked the agent if I had done anything to trigger the investigation and he said "We cannot reveal our tactics but we are mandated by the US Congress to conduct random searches." OK....

Lesson learned is to keep my mouth shut next time and just smile as people cut into line... which is normally my approach, but after 6 hours crammed in a Mexicana coach seat I just wasn't feeling the love....

No one here has any idea if it was random or not. I'll tell you one thing for a fact, though: caucasian businessmen and those appearing to be businessmen do smuggle.

bolding mine

Heaven forbid it took you an extra 10-15 minutes! Every time I go to Canada on business I get sent to the secondary line. The line alone takes at least an hour to get through, then 10-15 minutes of interrogation.

So do upper middle class college kids-should they be harassed at customs every time they enter the country too?

If Benjamin Franklin was correct, we never accept or tolerate any form of harassment from government, ever, at any time, in any place, in any way, shape or form, for any reason, under any circumstances. And I'm starting to get what he meant.

IMO, with which you may well disagree - I believe the lesson learned SHOULD be that sometimes things are just what they are.
No hidden agendas. No funny business.
Just random, you got chosen - someone else DIDN'T stuff.

I hope you have better luck next time!!
Dave

No, they should not. They should, however, be subject to the same random/targeted screening as everyone else. For those who consider this harassment, I suppose I can understand that. I recommend those individuals consider avoiding all international travel, lest they be subject to this "violation of their civil rights" or whatever the tin foil hat crowd considers it.

Funny thing is, my relatives in Europe avoid vacationing in the US because of the Customs and security harassment.

First it was papers please. You know Nazi Germany started that way too. Give government an inch, they drag you off to concentration camps.

For my money, the government is wrong until the government is wrong until the government is wrong. So leave me the .... alone. Always.

You make it sound like you didn't belong. The fact that you stood out is probably the reason you were questioned.

I believe there is a random sample and it is likely very small. Anything else is targeted. It must be easier for an agent to call it "random" than to say, "this is a targeted search and I can't tell you what the trigger was".
The random sample is valuable because it tells the agency what the typical traveler looks like. The inspectors don't like the random sample because it doesn't tell them what to look for.

THANK YOU, Orion, for addressing my original question! I suspected it was not quite as random as they stated...

I think you are fishing for the answer you want to hear.

It might have been a random inspection, or you might have been targeted. I haven't yet read anything that rules out either possibility.

Edited to add: I know that when immigration writes a "1" in a circle, I usually sail through customs -- though not always. Does anyone know what "CXL" (or similar) might indicate?

As some open-source documents indicate, the random inspection program is called Compex. That could explain the C and X.

A circled number is how many people in your family. It tells the guys at the end how many people to let out of the hall when given the card.

CXL = Check Xtra Long

Just kiddin'!