Is Riding the Bus a Ticket to Jail?
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection, also known as the Border Patrol, confirms that its agents in Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo check the citizenship status of travelers passing through by bus and train every day.
Agents check for citizenship in the bus and train station—often waiting at the Greyhound ticket counter, or watching people as they disembark for food—and onboard buses and trains already filled with passengers. People who have witnessed or been subject to Border Patrol agents questioning describe two practices: agents explicitly target a group of people or ask everyone on board about their citizenship status.
People routinely singled out for questioning include those who appear to be Mexican, Central American, South Asian, Asian, Afro-Caribbean, or Middle Eastern, according to reports from the Detainment Task Force, a Northern New York group. Border Patrol officials deny that the agency racially profiles, insisting that they look for suspicious behaviors and, “question people with blond hair and blue eyes as much as anyone else.†But common understandings of race in the U.S. fuse nationality and ethnicity so that some groups are permanently deemed to be “foreign.†Read the full article by clicking the "more" button below.
Additional Information: Detention Task Force | American Harvest: a naïve, incomplete, and shamefully ignorant portrait of agriculture in the United States | Chilean Activist Victor Toro Detained By Homeland Security | Victor Toro Released on Bail | ColorLines.com