I have a friend. Her name is Gwen. She is a young woman of 22. A professional actress. She is a dual Canadian/British citizen and her passports and traveling papers are in order. She took a bus from Central Mexico to the Texas border. Her plan was to change busses in Laredo and meet up with her boyfriend, a former U.S. Soldier (current Texas National Guard,) in Dallas and set up house together.
Instead, she was detained by the TSA and handcuffed to a chair for over an hour. The Agents went through all her stuff, read through her personal diary, she was forced to miss her connecting bus, was not allowed a phone call to her frantic mother who was waiting to hear she'd crossed the border. Gwen was finally let go without a word of explanation, apology or assistance. Given the TSA's track record of power trips and prurient interests, one has to wonder why a young, pretty, white girl, with a slightly British accent, certainly not a suspected racial profile of the terror watch, coming across the border from Mexico was detained and handcuffed. Did the TSA guy get a crush?
But there's more.
Meanwhile, Gwen's mom, a good friend and source for this tale, was trying to call the bus company and border stations on both sides. She finally got hold of the TSA who told her they had no record of detaining Gwen or a record of her border crossing, and that, “maybe the Mexicans had her.”
Laredo, like all northern Mexican towns bordering Texas, is a mean, nasty place and a hub for drug traffickers. No Mom wants to hear her only child is stranded in a place like that.
The idea a young single woman crossing the US border with Mexico was detained for more than an hour, questioned about entries in her personal diary, her references checked and cross-checked and then they have no record of their action is mind boggling to me. But in an America where oversight and accountability are only enforced upon the 99% and institutions of power and privilege are given a free pass, what can one expect?
Were the TSA agents merely amusing themselves after year upon year of no terrorists, no terrorists, no terrorists or did they think they had a real Mata Hari on their hands involved with smuggling nuclear codes to the Russians? Or were they just horny and absolute power corrupts absolutely?
We'll never know. It's a state secret.
Or it never happened.
Or both.