Two couples who are friends of mine are traveling separately to Europe over the summer. Each couple consists of one US-born person and the other a naturalized citizen. When describing their holiday plans, they spoke only of their itinerary and what they looked forward to seeing and doing, By contrast, if I were to be making a trip by air, even within the US, Trump’s America now requires me to think of what I should do if I am confronted by agents of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This is no idle concern on my part, since my political views could well trigger interviews with them.

My post about the detention and questioning at Chicago airport of social media activist Hasan Piker by CBP on his return to the US from a trip to France made me think about what might be going on behind the scenes that trigger such detentions. In Piker’s case, there did not seem to be any obvious clues such as past violations of the law. What the CBP seemed to be focused on were his public criticisms of Trump and of Israel. But even if there had been some legal infraction, even a minor one, what is the process by which ‘violators’ are identified and pulled aside for questioning?

It is possible that it is only at the point at which travelers present their identification documents at immigration that their name is submitted to a government database and any problem with the law turns up and causes a problem. But that does not seem to fit all the facts. There have been cases of CBP officials going down the jetway into the plane and taking people into custody even before they deplaned and submitted any documents. I have also read reports of people being detained after getting off the plane on a purely domestic flight, where all one has to do is provide proof of identity and not of citizenship or immigration status.

This suggests that CBP may have obtained the flight manifests from the airlines and know who is on every plane even before they disembark. When combined with a database of dossiers of everyone in the US, including their political views, that means that people may be being singled out for questioning as soon as they get on the plane and long before they arrive at their destination. This represents an Orwellian state of surveillance, much more intrusive than I had imagined before. I have tried to find out if that is indeed the case but there is scant information available. Given that we are dealing with a lawless regime that has no respect for due process, the rule of law, civil rights, or even basic decency and ethics, it is probably safer to assume the worst.

In that case, how should one be prepared to defend oneself against possible questioning? Most people, especially white, well-to-do Americans who were born here and with no history of political activism, will think that they are safe and will travel abroad with the sense of assurance that comes with their privilege, that little has changed that affects them and that they will be let back into the country unhindered upon their return.

But hearing about Piker’s case made me far less sanguine about my own. Like Piker, my ethnic heritage is not that of white Americans. In his case, his family is from Turkey but he was born in the US and thus presumably met the highest level of supposed protection of the US constitution, though his non-white heritage takes him below the highest standard of protection in Trump’s America. But in my case, in addition to not being white, I am also a mere naturalized citizen. Technically, I should have all the rights and privileges of anyone born in the US apart from being eligible to be president, hardly an inconvenience. But in Trump’s America, it is quite possible that attempts will be made to strip naturalized citizens of their citizenship, based on some manufactured cause, and thus become liable to expulsion.

So I have less protection than Piker. Although my blog does not command nearly as much visibility as Piker did, all the government has to do is put my name into a search engine to find a two-decades long history of political writing. I have been particularly harsh on two topics that CBP questioned Piker about, Trump and Israel. I have been scathing about Trump and described Israel as an apartheid state a long time ago and have had no hesitation of describing what it is doing now in Gaza and the Occupied Territories as genocide, so this post alone would be sufficient for them to flag me.

When you add to that my strong advocacy for the rights of other groups that the Trump gang actively discriminates against such as LGBTQ (especially the transgender community), minorities, and immigrants, and support for those fighting climate change and for reproductive rights, and support for feminism, civil rights, DEI, socialist and anti-capitalist causes such as trade unions, and massive tax hikes on the rich, it will take no more that a few seconds for CBP to conclude that in the eyes of the Trump gang, I am an enemy of the regime, opposing pretty much everything they stand for.

I have no intention or desire to travel abroad or even domestically by air in the near future, but one can never tell when some need might arise. If I should need to do so, I have to be prepared to face questioning by the CBP and ICE agents. As my earlier post said, what people should do other than answer questions about one’s name and citizenship, is to say that you want a lawyer and that you are invoking your Fifth Amendment rights and will not answer any other questions. I will not indulge in any chit-chat, however friendly the official might seem. The only thing I will do is ask “Am I being detained?”. If they say ‘no’, I can leave. If they say ‘yes’, they have to bring charges against me to hold me.

This article by the ACLU tells you what rights you have when questioned by law enforcement. Although you have fewer constitutional rights at the border, the definition of border is so expansive that you can be considered to be in a border region pretty much anywhere in the country, but you still retain some rights.

You have the right to remain silent or tell the agent that you’ll only answer questions in the presence of an attorney, no matter your citizenship or immigration status. You do not have to answer questions about your immigration status. You may simply say that you do not wish to answer those questions. If you choose to remain silent, the agent will likely ask you questions for longer, but your silence alone is not enough to support probable cause or reasonable suspicion to arrest, detain, or search you or your belongings.
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An immigration officer also cannot search you or your belongings without either “probable cause” or your consent. If an agent asks you if they can search your belongings, you have the right to say no.
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As part of its immigration enforcement efforts, CBP boards buses and trains in the 100-mile border region either at the station or while the bus is on its journey. More than one officer usually boards the bus, and they will ask passengers questions about their immigration status, ask passengers to show them immigration documents, or both. These questions should be brief and related to verifying one’s lawful presence in the U.S. Although these situations are scary, and it may seem that CBP agents are giving you an order when they ask you questions, you are not required to answer and can simply say you do not wish to do so. As always, you have the right to remain silent.

Refusing to answer CBP’s questions may result in the agent persisting with questioning. If this occurs, you should ask if you are being detained. Another way to ask this is to say, “am I free to leave?” If the agent wishes to actually detain you — in other words, you are not free to leave — the agent needs at least reasonable suspicion that you committed an immigration violation to do so.

This raises another problem. Like most people, though I know lawyers as friends and acquaintances, I do not have one in a professional capacity, as on a retainer. So what happens when you ask for a lawyer and invoke your Fifth Amendment rights and ask if you are being detained? Can they hold you until your lawyer arrives or they provide you with one? According to some sources, asking for a lawyer pretty much ends the detention, even before any lawyer arrives. But I still plan on asking a few lawyers that I know whether they would be willing to take my call if such a situation should arise. Of course, all this presupposes that the CBP people will follow the law and in these days of Trumpian despotism, all such bets are off.

It is absurd that people like me, who are extremely law-abiding and whose only ‘crimes’ are expressing views on politics that go against the government, have to even think of such contingencies. But that is the purpose of Trump’s policies, to instill fear in ordinary people so that they will tone down their criticisms of his regime. But I do not plan to tone down at all. If anything, I will be even more vehement, to compensate for those who, for whatever reason such as jobs or family, are more vulnerable than me and thus have to be reticent.