Sunday, July 11, 2010

At least the border with Canada is secure

Or at least, it seems to be secure against the return of U.S. citizen Sylvie Nelson.
Sylvie Nelson's border crossings are anything but routine. Customs agents sometimes order her out of her car. Twice, they handcuffed her in front of her young children. Once, agents swarmed her car and handcuffed her husband, too.

She tells them: It's not me you want, it's a man with the same birth date and a similar name. Agents always confirm that and let her go.

Then it happens again. And again.

"I can understand one missed identification," Nelson said. "But over and over and over again?"

Nelson, a 44-year-old white woman, keeps getting snared at the Canadian border because she apparently shares some key identifying information with a black man, possibly from Georgia, who is in trouble with the law. While such cases of mistaken identity at border points and airports are not unique, Nelson's case is unusual in that only some of her crossings set off an alarm and because federal officials have not fixed the problem after almost two years.
(H/T: Mrs. Paco)

4 comments:

RebeccaH said...

My brother-in-law's name (a very common one) is on the no-fly list. If he forgets to include his middle name on his ticket, he gets stopped every single time. He hasn't, as far as I know, tried to cross the border by car, so no telling what would happen there.

Minicapt said...

They're closing in on Mark Steyn, only two states away ...

Cheers

Anonymous said...

More unnecessary proof that bureaucracy creates and rewards incompetence and stupidity.

yojimbo said...

Relax, at least your health care is in the very best of hands now. All the rest is just noise.