An American citizen says he and his wife were detained for hours by U.S. border agents when they returned to the United States after a short trip to Canada.

Bachir Atallah told CNN he and his wife, Jessica, were driving back into the U.S. Sunday evening after visiting family in Canada for the weekend when U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents stopped them for a secondary inspection at the Highgate Springs checkpoint in Vermont.

Atallah, who is originally from Lebanon, said he was told to park his Range Rover and hand over his keys. When he asked the officer why, the officer placed his hand on his gun and told him to exit his vehicle, Atallah said. He said he was then handcuffed and led into a cell, where his belongings were confiscated. He said his wife was put into a cell across from his.

“Seeing my wife’s mascara running because she was crying, it was heartbreaking,” Atallah said. “It wasn’t humane.”

    • AmazingAwesomator@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      yeah - the dogwhistle language was pretty much “jail the brown people”.

      i’m sure my mother is estatic. she told me she is scared all the time because one of her neighbors is chinese (she doesnt know them or talk to them; i have never met them… and neither has she, officially). that is the only basis for her fear - she makes up stories about them and everything. the last story she made up was how they were running an international crime ring to get more chinese people to live near her…

      fucking white people :(

      • Fingolfinz@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Fucking hell, doesn’t sound far off from my mom other than the situation. I finally had to just block her number cos she wouldn’t respect my wishes of not talking about religion or politics cos she’s just a hate filled little shit bag

    • NABDad@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      The victims in this case are magats.

      “My brother voted for President Trump. What he and his wife regret is the trauma they endured on U.S. soil—both handcuffed without cause, separated, humiliated, and treated like threats instead of citizens.”

      They’ll jerk off to it until it’s their turn.

  • Punkie@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I have seen some rhetoric about this, like “a few bad apples,” but here’s the problem with this and a lot of enforcement jobs.

    • Polite and decent people, on average, dislike confrontation. Thus, are not particularly attracted to these types of jobs.
    • This leads to an uneven amount who are fine with confrontation or even like it. Some of these people are sociopaths and psychopaths.
    • People who are psychopaths are actually very attracted to position where they have power over people.
    • US Customs are not regulated under the same laws as police or military. They can do what they want, when they want, with little to no discretion.

    Are all US customs agents bad? No, of course not. But unchecked power is dangerous for anything. I can’t tell you what percentage is or is not, because you can’t measure a negative. But I see this in military, police, hired guards, and politics.

    Many years ago, they cavity searched an underage girl at my local airport (Dulles) as she returned with her family from a vacation in Jamaica. They separated her from her family, did not tell her family, and searched all her holes “for drugs.” They defended their actions by saying, “if we told people we didn’t cavity search babies, they’d hide drugs inside babies.” Essentially admitting, with no shame, they’d cavity search an infant. All in the name of “stopping drugs.” Oh and the girl? US citizen, but dark skinned. The mistake they made was her dad was a powerful attorney and went public.

    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106hhrg66023/html/CHRG-106hhrg66023.htm

    https://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/circle/raceprofiling/stories.racial.profiling.html

    • Donebrach@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      I am going to say right now, the actual phrase is “a few bad apples spoil the bunch” and it is to literally say that yes, one or two massive assholes in any collective will eventually fuck shit up for everyone if not dealt with. I don’t know why the second part of that phrase stopped being acknowledged but it isn’t supposed to be just a hand wave to say oh it’s just one guy so let it go.

      also go be clear, i am talking about ICE, not the american citizens illegally detained for daring to return to their county while being human.

  • Ileftreddit@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    To be honest, secondary inspections are fairly commonplace at the US-CAN border. A (white) Canadian friend of ours was deported back to BC and barred from entry for 5yr because she overstayed her tourist visa. This article said he was detained Sunday evening and released by 11pm, which is like 6 hours tops- I’ve heard of people staying 8+ hours.

    CLEARLY the fact that his name is Atallah and he and his wife are Lebanese had everything to do with this, but at some point it’s like, read the room. Don’t do int’l travel and expect it to go well in Trump’s Amerika

  • HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    So basically anyone non-white should never visit, and if youre not white and plan to leave, plan on it just being for good.

    Murica

  • BossDj@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    I think people in here didn’t read the article. Border patrol explained that he was just overreacting. Being cuffed and placed in a cell for hours is part of normal operating procedure. It’s all fine. Everything is fine.

    • andrewta@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Wouldn’t surprise me if that is his plan. We can both name a few countries where it is very hard to travel in or out of the country. They aren’t nice places to live

  • j0ester@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    I guess I’ll see about my uncle and his wife. They’re up in Canada this weekend for the holiday. Her family is there.