Two times out of the last three, the have detained my wife, a blonde, blue-eyed German citizen with no record of anything beyond a three year old parking violation in the German town of Velbert (it was €10, and it was paid immediately, when trying to enter the USA (accompanied by me, a US citizen) at the Atlanta airport.
The first time, they said she had spent too much time in the USA, even though her departure ticket was clearly within the legal limit of visa-free stay. We were sent to a detention area, and made to stew for an hour. Finally, she was called before three supervisors. They took all of thirty seconds to say, OK, you're fine, you're free to go.
The second time, the CBP officer, clearly an immigrant, himself, from his accent, detained her, claiming her fingerprints didn't match. Her protestations that her hands had the same fingers on them that they had the last hundred times she entered the USA were to no avail. Once again, to the detention area. Almost an hour later, she gets called by a supervisor. This time, he rolled his eyes (maybe the guy who detained her had a history of this), and it took him all of 10 seconds to say, "you're fine, you can go."
Now, we have also had sensible immigration officers who had enough experience to know that my wife clearly presented no danger to the security of the USA, and saw she had enough stamps in her passport to realize that she went back and forth several times a year. But the fact that not ALL our immigration officers get the training to act sensibly before they start throwing their weight around is a national scandal. This is without even getting into the practice of sending armed goons to board buses in the middle of the continental USA for no other reason than to harass people. Do they think some Mexican drug cartel leader having business in Las Vegas is going to board a bus from L.A. to get there?
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