As I write this, I am riding a Trailways bus heading from Rochester, New York, back to my home city. My home city is within the continental United States. At no point during the course of my trip into Rochester did I leave the United States or cross any international border, and I will not be doing so on my trip out. (The bus is ultimately destined for Toronto, but it will stop in Buffalo first to pick up more passengers, and passengers to Toronto will have to disembark, present proof of citizenship and answer customs and immigration questions posed by Canadian border agents when it reaches the U.S.-Canada border crossing at Fort Erie, Ontario. I will not be on it by then, because I will have changed buses to reach my U.S. destination.) Yet, once again, it happened.
What happened? U.S. immigration agents boarded my bus before it left Rochester and asked every passenger on the bus to state his or her citizenship before the bus was permitted to leave the gate. They did not ask for proof of citizenship; they took people's word for it. But they did ask.
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This is far from the first time I've been subjected by this treatment--this citizenship inquiry by U.S. immigration agents entirely within the boundaries of my own country, at a time when I was not leaving it within the course of my trip. It's been going on at the Rochester intercity bus station for years. I've even published a previous diary about it. Immigration agents are always at the bus station in Rochester, boarding outgoing buses and querying the passengers before they allow the bus to leave. They do it at the Amtrak station, too. They do it at the Amtrak station in Buffalo and the combination Amtrak-bus station in Syracuse. Oddly enough, I've never been asked my citizenship before being allowed to disembark or board a bus in Buffalo, which is much closer to the Canadian border than either Rochester or Syracuse (which are separated from Canada by Lake Ontario and a significant chunk of land; neither is directly on the lake). Yet in Rochester, always. Sometimes even when I was just passing through the city on a bus on my way to someplace else. The agents query every disembarking, boarding, or through passenger as to citizenship, and only when they are done does the bus leave. And yes, sometimes, if they get answers they decide they don't trust, they pull passengers off.
I've read about this practice and learned that these "within-the-country" border patrol sweeps began in 2006, during the administration of Bush the Younger (who's surprised at that?). I read articles about them in which border agents claimed to have made many arrests of passengers illegally within the country. Yet, to my mind, they are an obvious violation of the rights of a U.S. citizen to move freely within the country without being asked citizenship questions--period. The legal loophole, I gather, is that they don't require you to produce proof, and technically you don't even have to answer the question if you don't want to. You can refuse. But let's be real here. What happens if you refuse? What happens if you refuse, and you have dark hair and eyes and olive skin like I do, thanks to my Italian grandparents? I really don't want to find out. I don't want to have to make myself a test case. I have a life and a master's degree program to resume this week, and I have federal student loans. If I refuse, are they really just going to move on? And what if they don't? What if they begin suspecting me just because I refuse?
(Of course, nobody does this to people traveling in private vehicles. You won't find a traffic stop in upstate New York in which cars are stopped and drivers and passengers are asked about their citizenship. This happens only to passengers on intercity buses and Amtrak trains. If you drive your own vehicle or ride with someone who has one, you're exempt. You're only under suspicion if you're a bus or train passenger.)
Every time I've visited friends in Rochester, where I once lived, this has bothered me, but never before did I say anything. This time, I decided to say something. When the border agent asked me, I said, loudly enough to be heard by passengers around me: "I realize I'm not legally required to answer this question, but I am a U.s. citizen. I came here from (U.S. city) and am going back to (U.S. city)."
The agent said to me, "True, you are not legally required to answer that question. But it IS legal of us to ask."
I muttered under my breath "It's not." (Because, at least to my mind, it shouldn't be. And I had truly hoped that when Barack Obama became President, he would eliminate this nonsense. But it's another piece of the admittedly Sisyphean mess left to him by his predecessor that he has yet to clean up. I'm not happy about that. I'm still giving him my vote in November, in part because any other alternative would only make things worse, but I'm not happy about that.)
Well, as you know because I'm sitting here writing this, nothing further happened. But I'm still angry. I'm angry because I still feel intimidated and scared into cooperating with this. I'm angry because I heard people around me not even questioning it. I'm angry because I heard some of them giving quite intricate details as to their citizenship status--which they shouldn't have had to do unless they stayed on this bus and crossed the border into Canada, at which time they would have been questioned by Canadian agents. Or, if their trip is long, traveled all the way down to Mexico and been questioned by Mexican agents.
You'll find a link here from a New York Times reporter about this "citizenship, please" experience in upstate New York in 2010. (It contains a link to a front-page story about the phenomenon.) It is now 2012. It is still going on. U.S. citizens, and non-citizens, are still being queried by the Border Patrol when they are nowhere near an international border--and not just in Jan Brewer's Arizona, either. It is happening in Buffalo and Rochester and Syracuse, and it is not ending. If it goes on, and continues to be considered a successful program at arresting people who are within the country illegally, how long before a "Papers, please" component is added? How long before you are legally required to answer the question? And how long before you see Border Patrol agents set up at the highways near state lines, asking these questions, and maybe even asking for proof?
It might be as close as the next Republican administration. But one thing's for sure: we have a Democratic administration now, and it's still going strong.
I hate feeling as if there is nothing that can be done about this. But I'm not sure what can be done. If any of you have ideas, I'd sure be happy to hear them. Because I don't want to someday feel I'd better bring along my passport on every trip to New York state, accepting it as the price we pay to be "safe from terrorists," or to deport people who aren't in the country legally. If someone's coming into the country illegally, the place to stop it is at the border--not the city bus station.