immigration nr they were suspicious of me at the U.S. border. why would i travel to chicago for an entire summer without having many connections there? why would i have packed so much in my car? was i planning to go there, live and work illegally, and never return? i got out of my car, instructed to leave everything there, including my phone. i was brought inside to the secondary-screening customs office, where i explained to the officer that i'd just quit my full-time job in toronto, and i was looking to take some time off and spend the summer in a city i loved. they asked me a lot of questions about my home in toronto, where i was staying in chicago, why i'd left my job, etc., and i answered them all honestly. i sat on a chair for about an hour waiting for them to search my car. the air conditioning was strong and i was shivering; i'd forgotten my jacket in my car. they brought in a piece of paper, showed it to me, and semi-accusingly asked "what's this?" it was a tax form that allowed me to do freelance work in canada for american magazines. i explained this, and that i didn't have any work that i'd do in the U.S.; that paper just happened to be in my car. but they'd already been suspicious, and this put them over the edge. i wasn't going to make it across. they then brought me into another room, patted me down, fingerprinted me... made me feel like a criminal, while i'm sure there were a lot of seasoned criminals they'd let cross no problem. it was humiliating and traumatizing. about three hours later, they let me go back to my car and drive back over to the canadian side. i got the hell out of there, but i vaguely remember stopping at a coffee shop parking lot right across the border to process everything before going any farther. i don't think i cried. i think i was in half-shock. i took deep breaths. i probably called my mom. once i was ready-ish, i drove 1.5 hours from the windsor-detroit border to london, where my boyfriend at the time was visiting his parents. i stayed there for awhile, and then drove the 2.5 hours straight back to toronto. a few weeks later, i brought much more documentation than i'd initially been told to bring and tried the drive again. i (literally) steered clear of the detroit border and crossed at sarnia/port huron instead. he looked at all my documentation and still grilled me. when i told him my sister was there for school and i was visiting her, he googled her name and school program. he asked "what are your chicago friends' names, addresses, and phone numbers?" (who knows anyone's phone numbers off by heart anymore?) i honestly told him i didn't remember their phone numbers or numbered addresses, but i could give him the intersections their apartments were at and tell him exactly what the apartments looked like inside. and i could get my phone from the car if he wanted to see their numbers. i could tell he was also kind of trying to make flirty conversation with me, so i used this to my advantage and complimented his tattoo, asking the story behind it. pretty sure he answered something racist. i finally got through. i had a flag on my passport for years. they even once briefly made me go to the secondary screening room at the airport when my brother and i were going to my parents' place in florida for christmas.  eventually i proved a pattern of coming back to canada every time i travelled to the U.S., so the flag was removed. but it took years before i was willing to go anywhere near the detroit border crossing. 211026 ... kerry i'm so sorry, nr. this sounds horrible. and definitely traumatic. when i was a kid my mom and i flew to toronto and i had no ID obviously, and we didn't bring my birth certificate, so they took us into a little room and questioned both of us and my mom didn't have any recent pictures of me and we were both terrified that they were going to separate us. then the guy asked if he could look at our ears. they looked the same to him, so he decided we were related and cleared to go. clearly he was fucking with us. it's all about power. 211026 ... raze i'm so sorry you had to experience any of that. both of you. it makes me want to scream when people abuse their power like this. as if it's a game to them and you're not even a person. i remember a friend telling me what happened when her family came to canada for the first time. the customs officer forced her father to shave off his beard with a dull razor as an act of subservience. she was a child at the time. she said she would never forget the look of humiliation on his face and the ragged mess of what was left of his beard when he got back in the car. she'd never seen him without a full beard. she'd never seen him afraid of anything. she didn't believe he was still her father at first. he didn't look like the same person anymore. and in some ways he wasn't. no one has the right to do that to another human being. no one. 211026 ... kerry ah that is heartbreaking. 211026 ... nr what. the. fuck. to both of these. shave his beard?! what could they even claim was the impetus for that? he might've been hiding a tiny gun in there or something? and comparing ears before letting you through is just... beyond ridiculous. it's all almost laughable. almost. 211026 ... nr i always say i'm going to visit family when i go to the U.S., because otherwise they quiz you. "visiting friends? how do you know your friends? when did you meet? what are their addresses and phone numbers?" (does anyone even know phone numbers by_heart anymore?) 220418 what's it to you? who go blather from