US officialdom can destroy love, so think what they can do to us
On a trip back recently to see my parents, going through immigrations at Boston Logan airport, I was nauseated when the officer checking my passport smirked and stared rudely at my necklace, a gold-coloured geometric shape. “What’s that?” he barked. “Some kind of religious thing?” Disconcerted, I managed a strangled, “no, it’s just a necklace” and was allowed through.
Even with my US passport (I also have a UK one), I feel nervous entering the arrivals hall in the US. An atmosphere of collective fear and unease is pervasive; the sight of officials bristling with guns among a captive audience in a legal hinterland is hardly soothing. The US border force is the most capricious, intimidating, uneven, bullying and scary in the West. The extent of its world-famously malign boneheadedness – only
sharpened in the paranoid Trump era – was laid bare last week, when a young Briton called Isaac Roblett, 24, from Hastings, was turned back at Chicago immigrations and banned from visiting the US… ever again.
Isaac had arrived to visit his girlfriend for a three-month stay – the maximum allowed under a tourist visa. Hauled
aside and interrogated, he was then locked in a cell for 24 hours while officials read all his text messages, including those written in the heat of passion to his girlfriend.
The incriminating message read: “In terms of a break-up, I don’t know what I’ve done to make you forget that in a month’s time I am moving to be with you.”
Based on this single piece of ardour, they decided Isaac was planning to settle illegally in the US. Never mind that he was hardly a known lawbreaker; and that, at 24, three months does feel like a lifetime. They assumed the very worst (which is hardly all that bad), and went for the nuclear option.
It’s hard to remember the country we used to love in light of such a border force: nasty, irrational, brutal and fundamentally anti-American in spirit. To me, their frat-boy rudeness was particularly unforgivable. Seeing the poor boy on the brink of tears, they reportedly told him to “man up” and “get over it”, before forcing him to buy a £700 ticket home.
Next time you plan to visit the US, you might want to think twice about sending any ambiguous texts to a loved one; in light of Isaac’s story, it could well mean you never get to see them again.