Untrusted Travelers

More news from the newspaper: “Border muck-a-mucks to alleviate our concerns” (!) It is good to know that a mere visit to Point Roberts will alleviate our concerns, but I am pretty sure that that is a pie-in-the-sky kind of promise. It is as if Obama had turned into the man from Hope. Governor Gregoire had written DHS--some 6 months ago--asking that people denied Nexus permits or whose Nexus permits are revoked for unknown reasons be given that quaint legal right called ‘due process.’ The federal liaison eventually replied that, alas, ‘it is necessary to maintain strict eligibility criteria for participation in a trusted traveler program.’ So take your due process, he implied and, well, you know. But they’ll come up and alleviate our concerns.

George Orwell would like that trusted traveler program talk. You get a Nexus card demonstrating your trustworthiness, but then they take it away without ever telling you how you suddenly became untrustworthy. I try to think what they might mean by ‘trusted.’ Not really trusted at all is the only conceivable answer. Today, I was returning from Canada with my trusted traveler card and after the machine looked at my card I proceeded to the booth. Then the border agent looked at my card and then he poked my card into his machine (which means he’s looking at all my personal information). He then came back out of his booth and asked me in sullen tones, ‘Where are you going?’ I thought he might be talking to someone else, because I am obviously going to Point Roberts. When no one else appeared to answer the question, I replied, ‘Point Roberts.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ the surly voice continued, ‘WHERE in Point Roberts?’ ‘I live here,’ I replied, and named my street. I felt like name, rank, and serial number were going to be required next. ‘Oh, okay, go on.’ And on I went. Exactly what was I being trusted about there?? Were we checking to see if I knew that I lived here?

Well, they’re a little crazed up at the border now because they’ve at long last gotten their radiation detectors installed. That means that they've got some very expensive machines newly set up on the U.S. side to determine whether we border crossers are transporting radioactive materials across the border and into beautiful downtown Point Roberts. Back in 2006, some company got a very big contract to put these machines into all the border crossing stations and all the ports, and probably in the banks and the tunnels and in laundromats and other places where the untrusted travelers hang out. Except that they also put them in the Nexus lane, which means they don’t trust the trusted travelers not to be traveling with nuclear weapons materials in their handbags and briefcases. Some trust. In God we trust and everybody else is probably a terrorist.

So, now everyone entering Point Roberts is being checked for emitting radiation, which means that anybody who comes through the border and has recently undergone one of those medical tests that involve implanted radioactive materials gets to set off the alarm. And then gets to prove that it’s him and not his car that is carting radiation around. I found an account from some guy who got picked up for emitting radiation over at a Michigan border crossing. You can read what happened to him (posted under march 17, ‘that end of summer glow’), which wasn’t terrible or anything, but which process certainly is going to slow border crossings a great deal more since some millions of those tests are probably conducted each year in the U.S.

Well, one missed nuclear weapon is certainly going to ruin somebody’s day, so what more justification do they need? I was happy to read, in that news story about the upcoming May meeting between us residents and the muck-a-mucks, that the Dept. of Homeland Security ‘is confident that explaining [their] processes and maintaining an open dialogue will alleviate many of [our] concerns.’ I might be willing to trust them if I thought they'd be willing to trust me. Afraid the latter is off the table, though.