We’ve all heard about how bad the airports are these days, but I don’t think I realized just how bad things have gotten. Michelle from Illinois sets us straight: she was a TSA detainee at O’Hare International, and lived to tell us about it. This isn’t America anymore; it’s Germany 1939.
“I just had a huge problem at the airport with the TSA [Transportation Security Administration -ed] and I don’t really know who else to tell. I will not go to the mainstream press and I won’t go to a lawyer, because I’m afraid of what might happen if I went totally public.
I flew back to the U.S. from London last week. I almost never travel for work. It had been a few years since I left the country.
After a horrible flight back in which a flight attendant called me a bitch to my face (because I rang the bell to ask for a Tylenol!), I stand in line for Customs for over an hour. Then, when I finally start talking to the Customs agent, a guy with a TSA badge walks up and says ‘Come with me’. So I followed him, and the next thing I know, I am in a ’special’ back room with three agents staring at me. They didn’t say anything for a while. I noticed that there were several sets of handcuffs on a table, and some kind of case in the corner that might have been a gun rack. There were video cameras attached to the ceiling.
I asked if something was wrong, and the agents just looked at each other.
One of them asked me, ‘What is the purpose of your entry into the United States?’
I couldn’t believe that this is what they were going to ask me. I said, ‘I’m a citizen; I was born here. Don’t I have the right to enter my own country?’
Apparently that was the wrong thing to say. It pissed them off. The guy just looks at me with a blank face and says, ‘We need to know what your purpose is for entering the United States.’
I’m like, ‘So I can go home. I live in Oak Brook.’ That wasn’t a good answer either, apparently.
Meanwhile another guy spots my iPhone. ‘What’s this?’
‘My iPhone,’ I tell him, and he grabs it away from me.
I say something like, ‘Hey, you can’t have that,’ but he just walks off with it.
Meanwhile they’re telling me to ‘have a seat, ma’am’ because I was ‘going to be here for a while’.
I ask them what the problem is (again), and one of them says that I am on some kind of watch list. They won’t tell me why I’m on the list, but I’m on it. By the way, I’m not a Muslim, don’t look Middle-eastern, or have any other kind of connection or affiliation that would be an obvious trigger for these guys. I’m a Republican, for god’s sake! But I’m ‘on the list’.
At this point I am started to be scared. I think of everything I’ve ever done wrong and worry about which things are what got me in trouble. Did I claim too many withholdings on my W-4? Maybe I have too many speeding tickets. Maybe they know I was a pot-head in college. I used to download MP3s sometimes on Napster. I sent in a DMV registration late once, and I was late sending in my tax return last year. Oh, crap.
‘What was the purpose for your travel?’ one of the guys (the dark-haired one) asks me. I tell him that I was on a business trip to London. I work for a bank.
‘Why are you asking me this stuff? Why won’t you tell me what the problem is?’ I start with some attitude again (I wish I hadn’t), and tell them that I know my rights, that they can’t hold me.
‘You have no rights. This isn’t the United States of America. This is an airport.’
I never felt so afraid and so powerless.
I ask them what it is they want, and they say they want evidence that I have a legitimate reason for entering the U.S.
‘And my passport isn’t enough for that?’ I ask.
‘No, it isn’t,’ the guy says. ‘We need reason to believe you have a legitimate purpose for entering. Do you have a business card?’
I panicked, because I knew immediately that I didn’t. I’d given them all out in London.
‘Do you have any evidence that your story is true?’
I ask the guy what will happen if I don’t, and he says that they may have to deport me.
‘Deport me? To what country? I’m an American!’
The guys just look at each other as if there’s something I don’t understand.
Thank god, right at that moment I realize: I have a couple of business cards they sent me as ‘proofs’ (no pun) with my title misspelled. Obviously I wasn’t going to give them out. I had meant to throw them away. I ask if I can have my laptop bag, and start digging through it. They don’t notice the typo on the card, and it seems to be enough. One of the guys leaves for a few minutes and then comes back: ‘You can proceed.’
I start to get my things, and then say, ‘Wait, my iPhone. I need my iPhone back.’
‘You can’t have it back.’
‘It’s mine! You can’t just take it.’
‘Ma’am,’ the guy says to me, in the most condescending voice you can imagine, ‘we can do anything we need to do in order to protect this country. If we thought it was necessary, we could send you to a holding facility and you’d never been seen again. Be grateful we’re only confiscating your personal effects.’ He was all business, but he was a total asshole.
I just left and reported the iPhone stolen to my credit card company.
I still have no idea why I was on any kind of watch list, or whether there is any way to get off of it. I don’t know if this would happen if I tried to fly domestically.
I just know that the next time I travel, I am going by car. Or maybe train.”
Tags for this post: big brother, Conspiracy, customs agent, detainee, iphone, transportation security administration tsa
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December 14th, 2007 at 3:24 am |
You’ve just been tagged my friend…
Go read my newest post on Personal Paranoia,
then hunker down and pump some neurons!
have fun!
Peace and white light,
Nick
http://personalparanoia.blogspot.com/
December 14th, 2007 at 4:45 pm |
Well I know I’m on some sort of watch ‘list’ somewhere, because I’m the biggest conspiracy freak since David Icke and Alex Jones, and I’m NOT quiet about it either…
I went through something similar just flying from one major airport to another, inside the US…
They rifled through my things, turned everything I had so meticulously packed out onto a big table, then started picking through it as if I were at a major crime scene and they were csi agents…
I’m an equine veterinarian, a doctor, a healer, not a terrorist with suitcase full of explosives or a razor in my shoe…
They didn’t ‘confiscate’ anything from me thankfully, but they did listen to all the messages on my cell phone, and all the verbal notes I’d taken on my digital voice recorder…I still felt violated just the same…
I realize the government needs to be extra cautious about a lot of things nowadays, but an American citizen who was ‘born’ here? Who doesn’t fit the standard ‘profile’?
Gimme a break…
I look like the average guy next door, I was dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt, I don’t have a beard or a mustache, I don’t even vaguely resemble anyone from the Middle East, and yet I was treated to three hours of intense scrutiny as if Bin Laden himself were my uncle…
It’s terrible that you had to go through that, but it seems to be the norm lately…
Of course after they were done with me, I couldn’t leave well enough alone…After all, it was Denver International…I was angry, tired and my ass was sore from sitting in a hard chair for three hours…
Once I was released from temporary ‘custody’ as they called it, I made straight for the head of airport security and made my thoughts known…
By the time I was through yelling and screaming about my rights as an American citizen I had a crowd of about fifty people behind me…
Seems this happens to a lot of average, everyday normal people just like you and I…
Sure, it didn’t accomplish anything to stand there yelling and screaming, but it got their attention…
Two weeks later I had to fly into Denver again for a three day conference…
Whatever ‘list’ I’d been on the first time around seemed to have disappeared or been misplaced…
They were all shades of ‘nice’ to me…
It gave me a good laugh, but it also made me realize how bad the world’s become…
Good luck on your next business trip, you have my sympathy…
Peace and white light,
Nick
December 14th, 2007 at 5:01 pm |
By the way, do you mind if I link to your site? The folks who read my Strange Corridor blog would love to know your site is out here…
Thanking you in advance,
Nick
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:05 am |
I live in O.B. too, where do you live?
I’m in S.B. division
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:48 pm |
They took the Iphone probably because it could make radio transmittance’s or interference that could effect the avionics instrumentation of Airplanes. They sounded too stupid to know the difference weather or not it could, and when you asked why they were taking it they had to tell you what they told you to make it sound like they know what they are doing……via threats.
If I were you I would look at it like 2 retards needed a job, they took you to practice and brush up on cause they had absolutely nothing else to do, and probably never will. This was the highlight of their life, and the most important thing they think they will ever be doing….believe me. Its clear they use terrorism to try to detect terrorism, which is completely anal retentive…..they probably think its kool and makes them elite or something. Pretty sick.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:32 pm |
That was absolutely ridiculous. I can’t believe the American people allow that to go on. I’m very glad I live in Canada and I will never travel to the U.S, I’m too afraid! I’m too afraid cuz your too afraid.
March 10th, 2008 at 3:25 am |
pliz pple its just an i phone try landing in africa after a govt has been overthrown then you will know what trouble can be
April 19th, 2008 at 11:28 am |
There is nothing special about this situation
due to today’s paranoia of terrorism, that is totally normal prosedures. there are worse in other countries
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October 17th, 2009 at 9:14 am |
TSA posted video showing that the claims she made were all lies.
October 17th, 2009 at 9:49 am |
She lied.
http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-tsa-agents-took-my-son.html