“You’re guilty until proven guilty!.. Got it?”
Racial profiling is a sad reality we must face in this day and age, especially if you’re Indian and decide to cross the Canada/US border with your cousin in a custom Gold-painted sports car to go to a Mohawk Casino late on a Sunday night.
Well that’s exactly what happened to my best friend this past weekend when he tried to enter Vermont through the Lacolle Border crossing.
Pulling up to the window my friend Vir and his cousin, who are both Canadian born citizens of Indian background, with no criminal records to speak of, submitted their passports for inspection.
Shortly after telling the agent where they were going they were told to pull aside for a “random inspection.” Uh-huh.
It’s hard to zoom zoom past the customs agents in this baby, especially when you aren’t a white dude.
They were both guided into a holding area to be frisked, fingerprinted, photographed and questioned for the better part of an hour (Luckily, they weren’t sent to the room where they search your butt) and the agents found nothing, but confiscated their phones to prevent them from making any outbound phone calls.
The border crossing agents then promptly told my friend that even though they found nothing “yet”, they don’t believe they are free of criminal intent. As a result, they performed a three hour extensive search of their car. Combing through everything, and taking things apart in their search, my friends were helplessly forced to wait.
At the end of this, they were again told that they are believed to be hiding something.
As a result, the border agents decided to inspect their phones. Going through the contact lists and message history, they spent another half an hour playing with their personal communications devices.
Of course, they found nothing.
But were my friends released? Nope, they were forced to wait passed the inspections. So out of boredom my friend stood reading the guidelines and text on the wall literature. Somehow this made the officers nervous.
One guard yelled at my buddy Vir “YOU, SIT DOWN”, while pointing with one hand and edging his other toward his firearm. Funny enough, the other bored guards were sitting around rubbing their guns with their hands. I’m not joking…. that’s hardcore intimidation.
My friend replied calmly that he was just reading the signs and didn’t do anything wrong.
This caused a second forceful command prompt from the officer, and his colleagues.
Interestingly, my pal told me that he felt like he was in the first Harold and Kumar movie…you know the scene I’m talking about. The one with the gun-ho white-bread cops who are above the law, but several IQ levels below, and are extremely paranoid and terrified of people of different colors. And no matter how calm, behaved or innocent my friend was, this is all they saw:
In the end the two were released from custody after 1:30am (after being first detained at 9pm)… But were they allowed access to the United States? Nope.
They were forced to re-enter through the Canadian side and given a notice on their permanent records that they were detained while trying to cross the border, and denied access.
As a result, they must now always respond to the question “Have you ever been denied access to the United States” with a “Yes” when asked.
Re-entering the Canadian Custom guard asked them why they were detained. My friend simply responded “Racial profiling.” The guard gave a sour nod and they went through.
It must be the gold color on the vehicle that has this officer all flustered up.
Ironically I feel a little responsible. They had asked me to join them earlier in the evening and as we all know, “you take a Jew, you go right through!”
Just to clarify, the photo I used of their car is for dramatic effect. They have a gold-painted Volvo, not a gold-plated Mercedes. And I have gone on several excursions across the border with my pal, and we have never been stopped.
This all goes to show you that even a country with a black President can impose such harsh “random searches” on people who aren’t caucasion. And even worse, don’t apologize and send them on their way after a nearly five hour detention.
Worst of all, I am pretty sure that this would have happened even if they were doing a grocery run, and not going to check out a new Casino.
Speaking of which, we now refer to this incident as “Kumar and Kumar Go to the Mohawk Casino.” They never had a chance.
And I forgot to mention that my buddy shaved his head bald two days before this whole event, I guess that was just bad timing as he looks bad ass without a head of hair… like an Indian Bruce Willis.
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