We’ve been in London, Ontario over the weekend for a wedding. We drove back today and crossed into the US through Port Huron, MI. As we drove up to the checkpoint, I rolled down the window and handed the customs guy our passports. He asked where we lived and where we’ve been, and then scanned the passports. As soon as he scanned my passport, alarms went off and a half-dozen customs officers surrounded my car. They made me shut off the car and get out, then raise my hands and walk backwards until I was behind the car. Then I had to put my hands behind my back and lean forward. They cuffed me and hauled me off to a detention cell. Then they did the same thing to Sarah.<\/p>\n
Once inside they asked me a few questions about where I lived and what my SSN was. After a few minutes they uncuffed me and let me out of the cell. Sarah was already uncuffed by then. Apparently they had an APB on a guy using my exact name with the exact same date of birth. He’s considered armed and dangerous, so they weren’t taking any chances. I think his description must be very different than mine, because the customs guy in the booth seemed to know right away I wasn’t their man, but because two items matched (name and DOB) they had to take me in until they were sure.<\/p>\n
Quite the experience, though. I wonder what all the people in line behind us thought when they saw us both being hauled off in cuffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’ve been in London, Ontario over the weekend for a wedding. We drove back today and crossed into the US through Port Huron, MI. As we drove up to the checkpoint, I rolled down the window and handed the customs guy our passports. He asked where we lived and where we’ve been, and then scanned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomography.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/randomography.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomography.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomography.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomography.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}