Let me know how successful you are crossing the border and getting home when you tell CBP to “pound sand”. They’ll just deny you entry and you’re left with very little recourse. Effectively they are the judge and jury and you’re stuck in the waiting area if you’re lucky, a holding cell if you’re not
If you think you’re immune just because you’re a US citizen, you’re not.
A friend came back to the US after 3 years. A time period you typically lose your green card.
However friend was smart to ask a lawyer and the lawyer said “agree to nothing, sign nothing, only a judge can take your green card”.
So she did just that. Put up with about an hour of shit. “No, im not signing anything”, “No, I don’t agree that I’m no longer a permanent resident of the US”.
Was eventually let in and nothing came of it.
Know your rights and stand firm. If some non-us citizen minority woman can do it, I’m sure you can too.
I'm shocked it went that well for her. I've had agents simply lie on their report, including lying to (and waking up) a federal judge and US assistant attorney in the search warrant DHS got for me. Also had them lie to me and tell me I wasn't permitted to enter the US with my US passport.
I'm quite certain if she had dealt with some of the agents I dealt with they simply would have lied or signed the form for her and kicked her out of the country. If they would have simply taken the green card from her and said "good fuckin luck" it would have been a hell of a road getting it back after being gone 3 years. Either way good on her for calling the bluff.
Native born Americans of non immigrant parents are incredibly afraid of the us government.
Growing up in a family that came to this country, you're very disabused of the notion these agents have much power.
For most of them it's a power trip. Once you understand that, you will figure out what to say.
You have to understand that they know they're lying to you but it makes them feel powerful. Play into it. Let them feel the rush of power but remain firm in your goals.
I know in developing countries, the cops are nothing more than opportunist thugs. I have friends who tell them to just "fuck off" regularly. Then they come to the US with the same attitude, and while true US cops have limited powers, the "fuck off" approach often doesn't go over as well as politely refusing and stating your rights.
When I was younger I used the "fuck off" approach. I would say it worked slightly better than the polite approach of asserting my rights (and then shutting the fuck up) I use now. The polite approach tends to make them falsely believe I am a push over. The only real reason I use it now is because body cams are everywhere and I assume the judge will be watching exactly what I say if I ends up in court. Before body cams I assumed the cop would just make up the most horrid shit possible so there was not point in being nice.
Course it makes not much difference now. I'm on CBP's watch-list or some shit so I'm in for the 16+ hour shit-show, fraudulent warrants, with HSI detectives and the works everytime anyways. Even the seemingly nice agents see it on the computer and say "you know the drill" and send me into the bad-boy room.
Or they won't. And they'll lie to a judge, and they'll lie to a doctor, and they'll lie to the assistant US attorney. They'll create an insane and false chain of probable cause to accuse you of having drugs up your ass. You'll be taken (while cuffed, and chained to a van) to MULTIPLE hospitals against your will and be seen without your permission (without an arrest, without a warrant, and without a court order, and without any psych hold), each of which sends you a multi-thousand dollar bill. You'll wonder when the lawsuit will end up getting served for the medical bills for a medical condition you never had that the agents made up. You will complain to the state medical/nursing board, and they'll tell you nurses can search and perform 'care' on you without a warrant, probable cause, any emergency, consent, an arrest, nor a court order -- and DHS will exploit this loophole to violate what few 4th amendment rights you do have at the border. The DHS agents will smile inside knowing they can weaponize the high cost of fake medical complains while under your detention to rack up debt in your name.
Later you contact an attorney, and find out the agents have qualified immunity, that suing is a financial black hole that you probably cannot afford, and that your best chance is to be some incredibly sympathetic mother-teresa kind of character that are one of the one per 10,000 or whatever ACLU takes up for a cause.
These are not theoretical. This is what they've done to me, and more.
> If you think you’re immune just because you’re a US citizen, you’re not.
That's a pretty big claim, do you have a particular example in mind? You might have your phone seized, sure, but denying a citizen entry to the country? Even CBP understands they can't do that and it would make the evening news if they did it.
If you are a citizen of the United States of America, and you are returning to the United States from a foreign country, Customs and Border Patrol are not allowed to deny you entry to the United States of America.
Of course the caveats - if you, as the citizen, have an outstanding warrant, they can arrest you. They can take your electronics. They can delay you. They can put you in a room by yourself for some period of time. But they can’t deny you entry without some kind of legal reason. They can’t hold you indefinitely.
It just comes down to how much the citizen is willing to be inconvenienced.
And I believe any American with any felony on their record will have trouble visiting Canada. I once traveled with a guy who had a felony assault conviction from a college bar fight 15 years prior. They wouldn’t let him in.
But they will lie to you and tell you they won't let you in.
They will also lie to you and tell you they have the power to cancel your passport.
I've had them pull both 'tricks' on me. Not a lot of people are well versed on their rights and without access to a lawyer it would be easy to believe a federal officer when they tell you these things. If you believe what a federal officer tells you, which is probably most Americans, being told you won't be let in unless you do X is going to be taken literally as 'unless I do X, I am denied entry to the country.' They will simply comply on the basis of a fraudulent lie, which I might add a material lie like this is a felony if a normal citizen says it to a federal agent.
I'm a brown man and I regularly tell cbp to pound sand.
Once they tried to hold me up because my wife had two drivers licenses. We were just married and she had an old invalidated license with her old name.
I explained the situation and he thought it was suspicious so I asked him if he was suspicious because I was brown really loudly and he then let us through.
I don't understand all these people who cow down to everything.
My family, due to being immigrants, have been in many fights with cbp, ice, ins. Like all government bureaucracies they are filled with power hungry people. Knowing your rights and politely but firmly insisting upon them will rarely land you into trouble.
It's the politeness and insistence most people have trouble with. But honestly even my high tempered dad did not have any trouble growing up.
>Let me know how successful you are crossing the border and getting home when you tell CBP to “pound sand”. They’ll just deny you entry and you’re left with very little recourse.
How about instead of this handwave-y impossible ask BS you cite any actual cases at all since Lyttle v. US (10 years ago) where the CBP denied a US Citizen entry or deported them? There is plenty of case law here. In Nguyen v. INS the Supreme Court stated that (emphasis added) "[...]a citizen entitled as of birth to the full protection of the United States, to the absolute right to enter its borders, and to full participation in the political process." And that's not even tied to a passport. In Worthy v. US the 5th Circuit found the government could not impose a penalty on returning without a passport: "We think it is inherent in the concept of citizenship that the citizen, when absent from the country to which he owes allegiance, has a right to return, again to set foot on its soil. . . . We do not think that a citizen, absent from his country, can have his fundamental right to have free ingress thereto subject to a criminal penalty if he does not have a passport."
Lower courts have since cited all this, even when the practical result was a mixed bag or a loss for the plaintiff. Fikre v. FBI was about the no-fly list, and the court didn't hold that the absolute right to return meant the US couldn't prevent getting on an airplane in another country, and that Fikre hadn't asserted enough facts to support that the No-Fly list and boarding denial were enough to violate his right to get to a port of entry a different way. I think that's unfortunate, saying essentially "well take a boat or figure out a flight to Canada/Mexico" isn't ok and I think the whole no-fly list is flagrantly bad, but the court did uphold a citizen's right to enter borders on getting to them.
Finally in Lyttle v. US [0] there was indeed a case where a US citizen with mental challenges was detained by ICE and deported, after being allegedly coerced into signing a document falsely stating he was Mexican citizen. This set off a saga that eventually resulted in the DHS terminating deportation efforts "on the basis that “it was determined that [Lyttle] was not a Mexican citizen and is, in fact, a citizen of the United States.”" The court refused to dismiss all damages claims, and at all times ICE/CBP proceeded on the basis of fraud that he in fact wasn't a US citizen. Court found that the government is simply not authorized to detain or deport US citizens, and thus may not ignore any credible assertion of citizenship.
So again, if you have a newer example to share where someone was denied entry at all, let alone "with very little recourse", you share it. Otherwise you're just posting FUD.
If someone's family/connections had the wherewithal and resources to get picked up by the ACLU and go to the federal court once in a decade I wonder how often it actually happens. I was subjected to some abuse by CBP, and found out there were a steady stream of people getting the same treatment ('internal' examination of their body without their consent by a nearby hospital, often without a warrant). The last federal lawsuit is practically a decade old, but I can assure you based on the bragging by CBP officers themselves the shit was happening daily. So a decade old court case doesn't mean it isn't happening more frequently.
If you think you’re immune just because you’re a US citizen, you’re not.