Cbp Inspection Process: Fill & Download for Free

Perhaps you are familiar with the old saw about how one bad event (“bad event” is substitute for the more familiar vulgar aphorism) erases a thousand atta-boys. We all tend to remember the bad longer than the good. So, forums like Quora will present the very small number of unfortunate incidents, without reflecting the, literally, millions of professional and courteous interactions. Out of over 40,000 CBP officers it is very likely some are less skilled than others and some are less tactful than others and some abuse their authority. However, given the screening process to become an officer, and the supervision and training, I expect that the overall quality of personal interaction between CBP officers and travelers is much better than what would occur between untrained persons and travelers.Some times we all rush judgement with insufficient information to form a reasonable opinion about what we observe. Officers have information about certain travelers and their background that require greater scrutiny such as suspicious travel patterns, previous immigration violations, criminal activity, etc. CBP officers become familiar with certain trends in immigration violations. Frequently, these trends have much higher incidence among travelers from certain cultures, geographical regions, etc. Because of this, some officers might be more suspicious of certain travelers and treat them with greater scrutiny. If the traveler responds in an uncooperative manner, the interaction can get very uncomfortable. The average traveler has no idea as to what the officers is considering during the inspection process, and this is further mitigated by the wide range of skill level, technique, and personality among officers.You may want to keep in mind that there is video recording and often audio recording in most locations where there is interaction between officers and travelers. Many officers have been exonerated when a recording has shown that allegations of misconduct were blatantly false, just as officer misconduct has also been taped. Officers are trained to be professionally courteous, but some are more gregarious than others.If you have a problem, or a compliment, you can complete a comment card. They are available from any officer or supervisor and are available at various locations in the Federal Inspections Services (FIS) area. If you prefer, comments can be made on-line at the CBP web site. These comments are forwarded to headquarters, and sent down the chain of command to the Port. In the case of alleged misconduct the incident is investigated and a letter with the results of the investigation are sent to the person making the comment.CBP is tasked with protecting our nations borders from unlawful entry. Visitors, by law, are considered inadmissible, until they can demonstrate otherwise. Most of the time this can be, and is, done in an expeditious and courteous manner. I did not observe the situation you ask about, so I can’t be specific. I do know that officers are trained not to profile based on race, religion, ethnicity etc.; however, they will profile based on travel patterns, behaviors, etc. Hope this helps to provide a little insight into the inspection process.

This is easy, because the old childhood adage applies: don’t speak unless spoken to. The CBP Officer will ask you questions, and you should reply honestly. They have specific objectives for the conversation -are your travel documents valid, that is, not counterfeit?are you entitled TODAY to enter the USA in the category of your visa? (You might be ineligible for entry but not know that you are).are you likely to depart before your deadline date, which he or she will now establish?are any of the items in your bags contraband, or subject to duty? (Again, you may or may not know the answer; there’s more to this whole inspection process than just your answers to questions.)

If you claim that you are a US citizen but refuse to show a passport, you will be taken to secondary inspection, where you will sit for an indeterminate time until they feel like talking to you. Then they’ll ask you why you don’t have a passport, and what documents you have that could serve to prove that you’re a US citizen.What happens next depends on what you do. If you offer to provide documents that prove your identity, and those documents can be used to correlate you with CBP or USCIS records that show that you are a US citizen, they’ll simply admit you after glaring at you for a while. While there’s a law that says that US citizens have to present a passport, that law is toothless. There used to be a $1000 fine for a US citizen who failed to present a passport, but Congress repealed the fine in the 1970s.If you refuse to provide any documents or provide any other information that can be used to verify your claim to be a citizen, the law here gets amusing. Under the current rules that apply, if you assert that you are a citizen, CBP has to come up with “clear and convincing evidence” that you are not a citizen in order to deny you entry. First, they’ll search you and your luggage (which they’ve had pulled aside) for anything that suggests that you’re not a US citizen. If that proves fruitless, they will run your photograph and fingerprints through their databases. CBP has photographs and fingerprints for a significant fraction of the noncitizens they encounter, as they’ve been systematically collecting biometrics on noncitizen entrants since around 2005, but they don’t have fingerprints for most US citizens. Typically, only naturalized citizens will have fingerprints in CBP’s system. If your fingerprints match a record in their system, that will prove either that you’re a naturalized US citizen, and thus admissible, or that you’re an alien, in which case you’ll be under arrest for a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 911 for making a false claim to be a US citizen.If all of the things CBP can inspect fail to yield clear and convincing evidence that you’re not a citizen, CBP will be forced to accept your claim to be a citizen and will have to let you into the country. But the process for doing this will take hours, possibly even days, during which you will be held in detention. It’s your choice.Oh, one more point: if you claim that you didn’t have your passport, but CBP finds it on a search of you or your belongings, you had better act surprised that they found it. Otherwise, you might find yourself arrested for a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1001 for making a “false statement” to a customs official, for saying that you didn’t have your passport when you knew that you did.