My daughter spent the last couple of years in the UK as a grad student. She’s back in the US, reluctantly b/c of January 20, 2017. Today her UK boyfriend came to visit for a week. Upon landing in Detroit, he got pulled in by customs b/c, they said, they weren’t buying that he was coming here just for a week-long visit. He has a return ticket, and he’s as white a British citizen as he could be, being born and bred in Wales to Welsh parents who can trace their ancestry to the little town where they live for uncountable generations. Still, the customs screening required he be interrogated--twice.
What was unheard of to me was the Customs agent calling my daughter to ask about her boyfriend: how they came to know each other, what she was doing in the UK when they met, what he did for a living, what they were going to do while he was visiting. And then, much to her surprise, she was asked if they were going to marry. I’ve traveled in and out of the the US about a dozen times in the last ten to 15 years, and in and out of about 10 other countries as well. In fact, my daughter has been to more countries—every continent in the last three years—and neither of us has ever been asked about purpose of travel at this level of detail. She and her boyfriend came to the US just last July for 2 weeks with no hassles of any kind. Of course, that was under a different president.
Perhaps others have undergone scrutiny like this, but I am astounded at the intrusiveness all in the name of “keeping us safe.”