April 2, 2008, 5:01 pm
Can you be asked to demonstrate your citizenship or residency if you are riding on Amtrak or Greyhound inside the United States?
The answer, apparently, is yes — according to the United States government’s border and transportation officials.But the frequency of this practice in New York State has raised protests from immigration advocates, who demonstrated in a march on Wednesday afternoon between Pennsylvania Station and Port Authority Bus Terminal.
It used to be a practice that was heard about only once in a while near upstate cities like Buffalo and Syracuse, said Maria Muentes, a spokeswoman with Families For Freedom, a group that helps people fight deportation. “Now we’re seeing it several times a week.”
The group had one instance in which a family was stopped and the mother detained on the train between New York and Chicago. “They should warn people that this could happen,” Ms. Muentes said.
Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, said the stops are just part of routine practice that has gotten more frequent as the manpower on the Canadian border has increased. In the last few years, the number of agents along the northern border has tripled, according to Ramon Rivera, an agency spokesperson.
That is still but a fraction of the southern border — 3,000 agents for a 4,000-mile border compared with 13,000 agents on the 2,000-mile Mexican border.
Amtrak has agreed to cooperate with border inspections on a random basis within 75 miles of the border, said Cliff Cole, an Amtrak spokesperson. “We’re merely facilitating their request to board the train,” he said. The train between Chicago and New York, called the Lakeshore Limited, passes within 75 miles of the border, he said.
Greyhound also said it simply complies with law enforcement requests, be it local, state or federal. “We are under no obligation to inform customers of law enforcement activity at any time,” said Dustin Clark, a Greyhound spokesman. And the bus company plays no role in the inspections. “The frequency and timing is up to the law enforcement,” he said.
While Ms. Muentes said anecdotal reports showed that the agents were focusing on Latinos in the inspections, Mr. Rivera said, “We don’t racial profile in the United States Border Patrol.”
So what exactly are the agents looking for?
If you are a permanent resident in the country, that is a green card holder, you are obligated to keep your resident alien identification card (which is not green, by the way) with you at all times. But how does one exactly prove citizenship? It’s not like we’re walking around with citizenship cards, despite attempts at a national ID card, or a proxy for one. Hardly anyone carries birth certificates (which don’t have photos anyway, and even if they did, who looks the same as when they were one-day old?). And driver’s licenses, which may or may not become de facto national IDs, are not equated to legal residence as the furor over issuing licenses to illegal immigrants have shown.
“All you have to do is state you are a U.S. citizen,” Mr. Rivera said of the Border and Customs Patrol.
That’s it? That seemed suspiciously simple. What if people lie?
And indeed they do. Each year, “We have thousands of people falsely claiming to a U.S. citizens,” he said.
Well, then a simple declarative statement of citizenship doesn’t seem to be a very effective filter, does it?
That’s where the biometric fingerprints, background checks and interviews come in, he explained.
The answer, apparently, is yes — according to the United States government’s border and transportation officials.But the frequency of this practice in New York State has raised protests from immigration advocates, who demonstrated in a march on Wednesday afternoon between Pennsylvania Station and Port Authority Bus Terminal.
It used to be a practice that was heard about only once in a while near upstate cities like Buffalo and Syracuse, said Maria Muentes, a spokeswoman with Families For Freedom, a group that helps people fight deportation. “Now we’re seeing it several times a week.”
The group had one instance in which a family was stopped and the mother detained on the train between New York and Chicago. “They should warn people that this could happen,” Ms. Muentes said.
Customs and Border Protection, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, said the stops are just part of routine practice that has gotten more frequent as the manpower on the Canadian border has increased. In the last few years, the number of agents along the northern border has tripled, according to Ramon Rivera, an agency spokesperson.
That is still but a fraction of the southern border — 3,000 agents for a 4,000-mile border compared with 13,000 agents on the 2,000-mile Mexican border.
Amtrak has agreed to cooperate with border inspections on a random basis within 75 miles of the border, said Cliff Cole, an Amtrak spokesperson. “We’re merely facilitating their request to board the train,” he said. The train between Chicago and New York, called the Lakeshore Limited, passes within 75 miles of the border, he said.
Greyhound also said it simply complies with law enforcement requests, be it local, state or federal. “We are under no obligation to inform customers of law enforcement activity at any time,” said Dustin Clark, a Greyhound spokesman. And the bus company plays no role in the inspections. “The frequency and timing is up to the law enforcement,” he said.
While Ms. Muentes said anecdotal reports showed that the agents were focusing on Latinos in the inspections, Mr. Rivera said, “We don’t racial profile in the United States Border Patrol.”
So what exactly are the agents looking for?
If you are a permanent resident in the country, that is a green card holder, you are obligated to keep your resident alien identification card (which is not green, by the way) with you at all times. But how does one exactly prove citizenship? It’s not like we’re walking around with citizenship cards, despite attempts at a national ID card, or a proxy for one. Hardly anyone carries birth certificates (which don’t have photos anyway, and even if they did, who looks the same as when they were one-day old?). And driver’s licenses, which may or may not become de facto national IDs, are not equated to legal residence as the furor over issuing licenses to illegal immigrants have shown.
“All you have to do is state you are a U.S. citizen,” Mr. Rivera said of the Border and Customs Patrol.
That’s it? That seemed suspiciously simple. What if people lie?
And indeed they do. Each year, “We have thousands of people falsely claiming to a U.S. citizens,” he said.
Well, then a simple declarative statement of citizenship doesn’t seem to be a very effective filter, does it?
That’s where the biometric fingerprints, background checks and interviews come in, he explained.
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