First Syria, now India...

[khaosworks]

Discovered this today...

Canadian in passport fiasco

A Toronto woman coming home from India says she was pulled aside at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, accused of using a fake Canadian passport, denied consular assistance and threatened with jail.

In tears and desperate, Berna Cruz says she told U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) officers she didn't want to go to jail. She told them she had to get home to her two children and was expected to be at work the next day at a branch of a major Toronto bank where she works as a loan officer.

Instead of jailing her on Jan. 27, an INS officer cut the front page of Cruz's passport and filled each page with "expedited removal" stamps, rendering it useless.

She was photographed, fingerprinted, barred from re-entering the U.S. for five years and immediately "removed."

Not to Toronto, but to India, where she had just spent several weeks visiting her parents.

I think this story missed the minstream US media entirely. Quelle suprise.

A Canadian Congressman is heading a protest, directed at Tom Ridge. The INS, so far, has yet to explain why Ms Cruz's passport was perfectly acceptable to authorities in Toronto and India but not the US.

Comments

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Land of the free my ass.

I hope she gets to sue that INS officer. Preferably including the idiot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the suit.

[cellio]

This is appalling. I await the US response. I fear I may wait a long time.

More signs that the current administration is evil

[filker0.livejournal.com]

Things like this have gotten out of hand, and as far as I can tell, the administration wants it that way. I hope that all of this comes up again in a year and a half while we're trying to oust the ***DELETED-FOR-CONTENT***s.

[djbp.livejournal.com]

Problem is there's no appeal against such abuses at the airport....