So you’re at the US/Mexico border, and Customs wan
Location: USA/Mexico Border
I am led towards the back of the building and into a small, windowless room with nothing more than a small table and two chairs. The florescent lights beat down upon my sweaty forehead as I watch the men shuffle down the hallway through the crack in the door. Strapped to their hips are .38-caliber pistols, which dangle just above the drug-sniffing dogs’ heads. My hands are uncuffed, so I stand up to stretch my back. “Don’t think about going anywhere!” a passing man yells as he pushes open the door. Returning from Mexico once again, it was just Uncle Sam’s way of saying “welcome home.”
Throughout my travels, I had become quite accustomed to the drug search routine of frisking, crotch-sniffing dogs, and the foolish question of “Are you carrying any illegal drugs?” Sometimes they would tear your luggage apart, dig through every pocket, wallet, and pouch. When they found nothing, you were left with your belongings scattered all across the table. Never mind the fact that it took you a half an hour to get everything in your backpack. “Have a nice day,” they tell you. I’d rather them repack my bag for me.
But there is always the comfort of knowing that things can be worse when you drive across the border. You can see the lone suspects from far away, surrounded by armed men, growling dogs, mirrors, and futuristic searching devices. Their upholstery is turned inside out, the gas siphoned from their tank, and their dirty underwear is strewn along the roadside for everyone to see. Trapped in a no-man’s-land between the Third and First worlds, the suspects become an attraction for other Americans returning home, while Mexico just looks on and laughs at the irony of it all.
Finally, there is that dreaded toilet in all border stations, where suspected “mules” are taken so that their feces can be examined by a team of DEA agents with computerized microscopes.
Don’t blame the US authorities. They’re just proud, dedicated, underpaid men fighting a noble war that they know they can’t win. They know that for every kilo of marijuana or cocaine they find, another 8 kilos have slipped through the cracks. Yet they push on, with the effect of putting a Band-Aid on a severed limb. Besides, statistics and past experience tells them that when you stop of young white American male crossing the border alone with no bags, there is a good chance you’ll find something.
Along the US-Mexico border, I am the usual suspect.
It was in Ciudad Acuna that things had changed. As the Mexicans in line were waved on through to my home country, the fat, greasy man meticulously thumbed through my passport. His eyes began to light up as a stern look grew upon his face. “Have a seat over there,” he said, pointing to more than 50 chairs, which were all taken by young Hispanic men.
It wasn’t long before a small man, who looked eerily similar to Cheech Marin, came to take me away. “Follow me sir,” he said, looking over his shoulder every few feet to make sure I was going with him. Opening the door to the back room, there were no dogs and no frisking. This was not the usual drug check routine; something else was going on.
Cheech Marin came back within a few minutes, with a small cup of coffee and a folder full of papers. Inside it was my passport and what looked like operating procedures for an interrogation. Starting off simple and friendly enough, he asked about my travel plans and how I enjoyed Mexico. But things changed fast when he started asking me for exact dates when I had entered and left the countries on my passport.
“When where you in Bolivia?” he asked.
“September,” I guessed.
“Well, your passport says that you were there in October,” he said raising his eyelids with suspicion and jotting down notes in his pad. It was as if getting a date wrong was evidence of a terrorist conspiracy against the United States. It was apparent that drugs had already been ruled out. I would have been on my way by then.
I figured I would go ahead and make the best of it. Acting like a steadfast criminal on NYPD Blue, I played the interrogation game. There was no judge, jury or cop in the land that could make me give up those secrets: who sold me that Aztec necklace, where I ate a big breakfast for 3 pesos, or the location of that $5 hotel with AC and color TV. I wasn’t going to let him get the truth out of me: that I was a traveler trying to sneak across the border with a few souvenirs.
I had become an outlaw.
And so the game carried on as he asked me where I was from. Instead of telling him New Orleans, I told him the name of the small suburb that I lived in. His eyes once again raised within suspicion as he said, “Well, your passport says that you are from New Orleans.”
“Well, yes, but technically, I live outside of city limits in Jefferson Parish.”
He continues to jot down notes on his forms so that he can later find out if there really is a Jefferson Parish. The questions continued on, to what I was doing walking back from Mexico at 8 o’clock on a Sunday morning without a single piece of luggage. I pause a moment as if to make up an excuse. My hands start shaking as I quietly mumble, “Just going for a morning walk.” His eyebrows once again rise, this time higher than ever before.
Cheech starts to look furious, certain that I am an Iraqi spy, an Egyptian terrorist, or a Colombian drug lord � or maybe all three. And so the questions become even more bizarre, covering every country listed in my passport and even ones that weren’t. He went over the list of State Department Classified “rogue states,” such as North Korea, Cuba, Iraq, asking if I had been to any of them recently.
“No, not recently,” I said.
An older man walks in with a copy of my passport and some more paperwork. “Clean as a whistle,” he says. Cheech’s eyes light up once again, this time with a look of surprise. He was expecting to find me on America’s Most Wanted or perhaps some state Department “World Terrorist List.” But there was nothing. Not one arrest, conviction, nor blur on my record. Just a name, birth date, and social security number. Could I have been CIA?
“See you next time,” Cheech snarls.