Avoid Amtrak And Greyhound - Page 10

US Border Patrol -TheReal 24

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffr0Hc74Sh4

Border Patrol Checks Bus Boarders

The Tampa Tribune By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO May 4, 2008

TAMPA - It's barely sunrise. The shadows under the passengers' eyelids show it.

"Morning, everybody," says a man in green, Jeremy Farner, standing between them and the moment they're longing for: getting off this Greyhound bus, packed 55 bodies full.

The travel-weary eyes open wider at Farner's next words, coming as they do in the middle of downtown Tampa: "U.S. Border Patrol. This is an immigration inspection."

Those words have been oft-repeated in buses arriving at or departing from Tampa's Greyhound station at 610 Polk St. in recent years. That was particularly so last year, when Border Patrol agents arrested 262 people on those buses, primarily for immigration violations.

Still, passengers are often taken aback when a port-of-entry-like immigration check takes place on a domestic bus ride.

"That kind of surprised me," said one closely questioned passenger, Tajinder Singh. The 23-year-old native of Punjab, India, is a Port Charlotte-based truck driver. He's often subjected to immigration checks when he hauls loads that originated in Mexico. "Usually, it's at truck stops or train stations near the border."

Farner gets that a lot from bus passengers he inspects: "The biggest question is, 'What border do you patrol? I don't get it.'"

Yet in many parts of the country, on Greyhound buses and Amtrak trains, it's happening more often. Mostly, it's about a nationwide manpower increase in Border Patrol in the post-Sept. 11 era.

Ramon Rivera, a Washington-based spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, said that when he became a Border Patrol agent 20 years ago, he was one of 5,000 agents, and transportation checks were most commonly done along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"Now we're over 16,000 agents, and by the end of the year we plan to be over 18,000 agents," Rivera said. "The things that Border Patrol agents couldn't do in Tampa or at the northern border were simply because we didn't have the manpower. Now that we have more agents, we can do those things everywhere, and for people on the northern border, it's something new to them."

The inspections have become so frequent in New York that the immigrant advocacy group Families for Freedom held protests at Greyhound and Amtrak stations there last month. Their demand: that the companies advise passengers upfront that they could face an immigration inspection.

"It's amazing that they find it necessary to provide notices that their bags could be inspected but nothing to indicate that a person could be inspected," said Joanne Macri, director of the New York State Defenders Association Immigration Defense Project and a frequent witness of the checks on bus and train trips.

"What's the problem with letting them know?"

Greyhound Lines spokesman Dustin Clark said it notifies customers that their bags may be inspected as part of its internal security policy.

"When an independent law enforcement agency comes in and is doing something, that's when we're under no obligation to inform someone of that," Clark said. "We cooperate with any law enforcement agency - whether it's federal, state or local - on a number of things. There are situations when it would actually impede law enforcement's progress" to notify passengers.
Minimal ID Required

Federal law grants Border Patrol and other immigration agents the power to question noncitizens or people thought to be noncitizens about their right to be in the United States. They don't need a warrant. They do need to be "within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States" to board any boat, train, airplane, bus or other vehicle to question someone.

The Border Patrol operates in Florida because of its 2,000 miles of coastal boundaries.
Steve McDonald, agent in charge of the Tampa Border Patrol Station, said bus station checks always have been part of his office's mission due to the nearby seaports.

"There are issues occasionally with stowaways coming into the Tampa Bay area as well as absconding and deserting crewmen," McDonald said, noting his agents also sometimes question passengers coming off domestic flights. He said they rarely inspect Amtrak trains because they have more stringent ID checks than Greyhound.

"It is one way you can travel around the United States with showing minimal ID. What better way to travel around the country if you were a person who wanted to do us harm or if you're here illegally?"

The majority of arrests involve people caught in administrative violations that land them in a deportation hearing in immigration court. They came across the border illegally. They overstayed a tourist visa or a student visa.
Most are Mexicans. They make up 66 percent of the 372 arrests at the Tampa station since October 2005.

A handful faced criminal charges. Ten people were charged with crimes for returning to the United States after they were deported. Some had criminal pasts that included felonies, drug-related convictions and sex offenses, McDonald said. Two were U.S. citizens: one arrested on a violent felony warrant, one on misdemeanor drug possession.

The Border Patrol agents didn't arrest anyone from the bus that rolled into the Tampa station from Orlando at 6:55 a.m. April 23. Farner questioned everyone. Some told the Tribune they had also been questioned elsewhere: Marie Jerome, 41, of Houston, said Border Patrol agents boarded her bus the day before in Lake Charles, La.

It was quick for most, particularly citizens, whose only requirement was to tell him their birthplace.

"Tampa."
"Boston."
"Tennessee."
"Georgia."
Farner slowed at the sound of foreign birthplaces:
"Mexico."
"Jamaica."
"India."

He asked for immigration documents from noncitizens.

He spent time with Singh, the India native, at Row 12. It turned out he was a naturalized U.S. citizen.

At Row 22, Farner also lingered with Jose Antonio Zalueta, 25. The Clearwater restaurant worker was born in Guerrero, Mexico. Farner checked Zalueta's Social Security card, which he later said he could tell was not fake. Zalueta's Florida driver's license was issued in recent years - long after 1999, when the state law went into effect making driver's licenses available only to those with ID available to legal residents. So Farner let him go.

Zalueta later told a reporter he was surprised by the check.

"I didn't have my residency card with me," he said sheepishly. "I left it at home."

Antoine Telus in Row 26 wasn't so lucky. The native of Haiti lives in Fort Myers. His only photo IDs were from the Pembina Nation Little Shell Band, an obscure Native American tribe in North Dakota. The tribal IDs in recent years have been used in a South Florida immigration scam uncovered by a Miami TV station. WTVJ's series revealed that South Florida brokers were selling the IDs to immigrants, telling them that tribal membership enabled them to live and work legally in the United States.

It wasn't true. The tribe decried the scam on its Web site.

Telus' two Pembina Nation driver's licenses won him an extended visit outside the bus with Border Patrol agents. They questioned him. They eyed a weathered immigration form. They ran a criminal history check. They checked for warrants. They checked to see when he entered the United States.

They checked out his immigration form - an application for an employment visa - and found it was valid and pending.

They let him go - in time to catch his connecting bus to Fort Myers.
'Glad You're Out Here'

The Border Patrol agents - McDonald, Farner and Rob Vadasz - are all veterans who came to Tampa after working the U.S.-Mexico border in California or Arizona. For the most part, they say the people they inspect at the Tampa Greyhound station don't seem to mind much.
"In San Diego, where I worked, when people waved at you, it's not always with five fingers," Vadasz said. "Here, it's totally different. They shake your hand."
Farner agreed: "A lot of times, they'll say, 'Wow, this is the first time I've ever seen this. Glad you're out here.'"
They're not at the Greyhound station every day. With five Border Patrol agents to cover a 12-county region, often they're parked along highways, looking for smugglers' pickups or vans overloaded by the weight of illegal immigrants in back.

To someone that posted earlier about checking in western new york...i thought officials are not allowed to ask people about status in NYS?

That is only true in NYC, but they have checkpoints throughout upstate NY.

Last year, one of my friends(who is legal), was taking a bus trip to Buffalo. He asked me to come, and I didnt know anything about existence of checkpoints, so I agreed. But the morning we were boarding, I didnt feel good, so i stayed. Now I thank god I stayed. They checked his passport and everything, and even though he had a student visa, they still gave him a hard time.

Is it true for all routes or only certain ones? How about the routes away from the border?

Has anyone taken amtrak or greyhound recently travelling from Los Angeles to Seattle?

we really advice against taking amtrak or greyhound because ICE and border patrol tend to randomly check those two modes of inter-state transportation, even if they are not originating from border states.

You are guys so dumb.. I travel by air every year to California, you can use your Passport of your country or a VISA if you came with one . You guys are to afraid

I travel by air, I do so 4 times a year every year that I am in college.

It does not seem to have any considerable risks, however, recent intelligence given to me by a reliable source that works in a foreign consulate informs me that they sometimes may inquire as to your lack of valid visa on the passport, or they may ask questions as to your immigration status.

The source of information informed to me that they do this at random to people showing foreign documents. Part of the job for this source of information is to use foreign documents when going through checkpoints when they travel in order to validate those documents as pieces of identification and she has been the lucky person to be asked more questions as to her legal status, she is a USC so she has not trouble with that but she just happened to inquire at one point why they selected her out and they responded that they do this to every nth person to show a foreign document.

I still feel its safer then taking the amtrak or the greyhound considering that it is already known that they will be checking those modes of transportation and your are not safe once you clear security at the gate like you would be in a plane, they are not yet randomly checking passengers on planes, that would be chaotic to say the least.

I am now inquiring my family members to go through security showing their foreign passports in order to sort of test the waters, specially now that security has been increasing (and to give me a little confidence when I go through the gates myself). It might not help much, but maybe, just maybe if the checks are random it might save a fellow dreamer that may be next in line to show a foreign document going through a check point (chance probably 1 in a thousand but I will take anything over nothing).

so your telling me they check EVERYONES finger print ?