Completely understandable. Why would I, as a Canadian who sees stories coming from the US of fellow citizens getting hoovered up into the bowels of ICE from border crossings, want to go to the US when I have a choice not to?
Going through pre-clearance in Canada would put you at much lower risk of hoover-age by ICE. According to the Preclearance Act all CBP can do is detain you until they hand you over to the Canadian police - section 14(2) - ... and maybe a light strip search if the situation warrants - section 13(1). [1]
[edit] There's also pre-clearance facilities at Dublin and Shannon in Ireland, and sprinkled around the Caribbean. Abu Dhabi has one but visiting Emirati jail is not top of my to-do list.
The state of "the law" in the United States is that you can be grabbed off the street at any point, denied a trial and detained indefinitely. As someone outside the US I would not risk visiting even if it's "unlikely". Especially as a member of a minority that is currently unpopular with the US government.
Preclearance happens on Canadian soil, it's not an embassy. They would have to literally kidnap you and take you on a commercial flight to the US. If you're worried about the US kidnapping you from foreign countries, then I strongly suggest you speak to an attorney because I suspect you have bigger things to worry about than a Florida vacation.
[edit] Ah, I see, I didn't catch that you meant on arrival. I suppose that is a risk, but it does seem like you'd really have to make someone's shit list to be admitted only to then immediately be removed.
Or literally anywhere else in the country. A week 1 priority was expanding CBP's Constitution-free purview for expedited expulsion across the entire country.
Since US citizens have no reason not to visit Canada (unless you count the return crossing), I suppose this will strengthen the already very healthy international conferences taking place there.
The return crossing is a huge concern. I have already decided I am not comfortable taking any international trips for the foreseeable future.
I do not need thugs at the border to give me a hard time because they feel empowered to do whatever they want. My non-white (but Americans born) partner is even more concerned. Sure, they have to let you back into the country, but they can make it painful.
> As an American citizen, you can refuse to have your electronics searched to reenter the US
Sure. And lose your day to being held for fuck all. Like I hear you, and I absolutely have the vindictive streak that would drive me to do this under the right circumstances. But you should be prepared to be detained, harassed, all while maintaining your cool and collecting detailed mental notes for follow through with a lawsuit.
> you will then be harassed every time you cross the boarder again. After all, you're one of those trouble makers
I’ve honestly been a dick twice through immigration, once accidentally and once a bit more purposely. I haven’t seen any evidence of this pattern of retribution. Like, civil-rights activists exist and aren’t constantly held up at the border.
> Memorize your lawyer's phone number, and make sure you can get to a phone
If you’re planning on pulling a stunt like this, a better plan is to have someone on the outside who will call your lawyer. Or better yet, tell your lawyer what you’re doing so they can call you.
Brown green card holders have it worst, but white, native-born US citizens are fucked too. The agent can decide you look Mexican to him; the agent can decide you're not sufficiently enthusiastic about Trump.
And if there's no due process for non-citizens, there's no due process for citizens either. That congress is allowing this to happen is deeply, deeply fucked.
Yep, without going into too much detail. My sister had a green card, is white, and clearly got a bored customs agent, because she got held in the little room with all the 'problem cases' for a couple of hours. It doesn't take much..
For a regime that's brazenly breaking the law, the upper boundary to what they can do to you is unlimited.
If they can put people onto an airplane and fly them to a Salvadoran gulag in the middle of recess in a court case about how they can't do that - and then laugh about it - the law is very clearly not a limit they care about.
I have doubts that waving your passport or your service medals in their face will at the end of the day, prove very convincing either.
ICE scooped up citizens and didn’t listen to them for weeks, way before this administration
one of the failings behind their unprofessionalism is that the civil case treatment doesnt afford the same protections and right to legal counsel as a criminal case
is this one of those things you need a source for, or can you listen to the concerns of other people and find the source yourself
Unless you are naturalized in which case there might be suspicions that were illegally naturalized (for example you did not disclose all social media handles that you own in your application).
Or you could be a birthright citizen in which case you can be detained just to be the test subject in the supreme court case.
In summary no one is safe except Trump at this point.
Can you actually take a cab across a border? I've never tried, but I'd assume cab drivers wouldn't want to cross a border. I'm curious to see how that would work.
An understandable question, but as a Canadian flying to the US you will almost creatively complete US preclearance while still on Canadian soil, meaning you can get turned away but cannot be physically detained by ICE.
It's not rules, it's physics. The airport preclearance stations are on Canadian soil and don't contain US-operated jails, all the CBP can do is hand you over to Canadian police.
But once you're in the US, and then you eventually have to leave which means you see officials ... trust level 0 means trust level 0.
Let's put this another way as an extreme. If this relationship existed for somewhere like Myanmar, Yemen or Turkmenistan it doesn't mean you can trust your safety once you're in the country.
Many Americans refuse to travel to Mexico on this premise. This is what I'm talking about. The US is now on that list.
I know this is little comfort to foreign born or immigrants, but we actually have been doing that to our own citizens forever. We just expanded the practice to border enforcement so foreign born and immigrants are now being caught up in the practice.
It is not US soil, it is not an embassy. Actions there are governed by the Preclearance Act (which is reciprocal, btw, Canada has the right to open precleance facilities in the US - it just hasn't made sense due to the relative volume of flights).
They can only detain you until they hand you over to the Canadian police. [1]
Section (2) clearly states...
> (2) A preclearance officer is not permitted to exercise any powers of questioning or interrogation, examination, search, seizure, forfeiture, detention or arrest that are conferred under the laws of the United States.
You're some rando on the internet, while the current American government is making a big show about ignoring the rule of law when it comes to deporting people. Nothing you say is going to reassure anybody. Hell, nothing anybody says is going to reassure anyone, from past presidents to the Speaker of the House to SCOTUS justices.
I'm not trying to reassure anyone. I'm explaining that US pre clearance is not US soil, it's Canadian soil, and what they can do there is very limited relative to what they can do in the US at actual US ports of entry. The "preclearance is US soil thing" is a common misunderstanding.
Because it's only words. There have been no actions outside of punitive tariffs, which are legal. There's no indication that the "threats" are any thing more than words, given the lack of actual action.
Much like Trump's last term. He certainly said he would do a lot of things.
Indeed, and since it was approved by Congress I'm not sure how Trump has the legal authority to unilaterally violate it without congressional approval. (Not that such legal niceties actually matter, as we've all learned by now.)
I don't dismiss any of these stories. I know that some of this is happening. But I want to share an experience that I recently had as a Canadian ACCIDENTALLY crossing into the USA.
I live in a border down. There are two border crossings here. I recently had something shipped to me using UPS as the courier. I did not engage the shipping. I did not pay for it. It was something that someone owed me, and they made these arrangements entirely themselves without my involvement or input.
UPS nonetheless wanted to charge me around $100 for "customs brokerage fees." I told them no way and that I would self-clear.
I had never self-cleared a package before, so I was in very new territory. But I was highly driven by my desire to not give UPS one penny of what I felt was a ransom demand (they were holding my property hostage unless I agreed to pay them money for services I did not solicit).
In order to self-clear, you just have to take a slip of paper that UPS gives you to your local CBSA office (Canadian Border Security Agency). The offices for these places in my city are at the border crossing.
I took a wrong turn, because I had no idea where I was going, only to find myself crossing over to the USA with no ability to turn around because it's one-way.
I did not have my passport with me!
The US border patrol officers were extremely nice. They assured me that it happens all the time. They had to pull me in and did search my vehicle but I was sitting in immigration for all of 20 minutes waiting for them to do some paperwork. As soon as they found out that I hold a valid passport, I just didn't have it on me, they gave me a visitor's visa and sent me on my way.
This was a week ago.
So yeah ... we hear horror stories. The news is alarming. And one single anecdotal data point does not statistics make.
I just want to offer a counter example to the horror stories because the news cycle loves to get people freaked out. That's their job.
What you say is true. There are still enormous numbers of people entering the US without problems. What's happened is an extremely low-probability event became slightly more probable, but still very improbable. Nonetheless, it's totally understandable that it makes people not want to risk it. If you liked to hike on a certain mountain and then found that, while the risk of being struck by lightning on an average day is one in 20 million, the risk of being struck while hiking on that particular mountain is one is one in 5 million, wouldn't you consider hiking on a different mountain? There's no denying the situation has gotten significantly worse, and for many people who don't have a pressing need to come to the US, that's enough to make it not worth it to come.
Right and putting border crossing issues aside, the CAD to USD exchange rate is a major hurdle. The conversion is costly, and for many Canadians, traveling to the United States just isn't financially feasible..
