Name profiled: How to get handcuffed at the border

When a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent tells you to step out of the car, give him the keys, and put your hands on the roof over the back passenger door and assume the wide pat-down stance, you don’t hesitate. For one, he’s not alone, and second, they all have guns.

You’re relieved when they tell you they’re sorry to have to do this, but it’s their policy and standard procedure. You’re a little dismayed, though, when they ask you to put one hand behind your back and the cuff goes on, then the other hand comes back, and the other cuff goes on.

And when they take you inside and have you stand face in a corner, you figure it’s serious even if you didn’t do anything remotely wrong.

You do think, could that bottle of fancy olive oil we bought in Toronto be a problem? Maybe the bag of loose tea -- could it somehow be misconstrued? Could I make a wrong step and suddenly look like a threat?

So it was a day ago moments after driving across the U.S. border between St. Catherines, Ontario and Lewiston, New York. My wife, Denise, and I had a great weekend visiting her old friends in Toronto. It had been an uneventful drive. Denise had driven through Toronto to our lunch stop at the duty-free shop on the Canadian side, but she had some papers to review, and I took over driving. I pulled into the border gate, which looks so much like a Thruway toll plaza that I had to fight the instinct to look for my toll ticket, and instead Denise handed me our passports. I handed them to the blue-uniformed agent in the booth.

The agent, youngish, with dark hair and sunglasses I couldn’t see through, was nonchalant. Then he paused and looked again at his computer screen.

He asked where we’d been and where we lived. Then he asked me if I’d ever had any trouble crossing the border.

I took the question too literally. No, I’d never had any trouble crossing the border back into the U.S. Of course, I hadn’t been across the Canadian-U.S. border in probably 19 years. Then Denise reminded me about JFK in August.

We had been returning from three-plus weeks in Ghana, the trip featured elsewhere on this blog. The immigration agent at the returning-U.S. citizens’ line told me to follow her. She led me to a room where about a dozen people were waiting in seats as if called for jury duty, and in the front of the room were about a half-dozen uniformed immigration agents. “You have a common name,” she said. She left me in the hands of another agent who took my passport and told me to sit and wait; it’ll only be a little while, he said. And it was. Within 15 minutes they called my name and led me to the international-concourse exit gate, passport returned. There was no explanation, and I figured it was all bureaucratic misunderstanding.

I don’t think my forgetting about the JFK incident had any effect Monday. They were going to get me out of the car, pat me down, handcuff me, and bring me inside the border station no matter what I said.

The border officers were professional and apologetic. It’s just their procedure, they said. Then an older officer, whom I took to me the supervisor on-duty, explained that a man who shares my name, age and ethnic appearance is listed on a detain-and-hold bulletin. The apparent-supervisor explained, though, that they were 99.9 percent sure I wasn’t the wanted man because I didn’t match a couple of key details of the other David’s description.

Yep, that name again. My mother’s given and family names have unusual spellings, and she once told me, my sister and brother that she wanted her children to have simple, mis-spelling-proof names. At times like this I think maybe she went a little too far: Bobby, Susan, David Hill.

It’s gotten me in trouble before. More than once I’ve not been able to use airport kiosks to check in for flight departures. At times I’ve been told to step aside by gate agents. Once I called the newspaper where I’d worked years before to talk to a former colleague who was now the city editor. A reporter who’d joined the company since I’d left asked who should she say was calling. I told her my name. There was a pause. When my former colleague came to the phone, she explained that the paper had been covering the case of a David Hill, arrested for killing a police officer and who was then in jail awaiting trial. I’m pretty sure he was the same man who, a few years earlier, caused the local sheriff to have fun with me on my daily incidents-and-arrests check for the paper when another David Hill had gotten arrested for stealing a vacuum cleaner.

Back at the border Monday: By this time, they’d long removed the handcuffs and had me sitting once again in the jury-duty room, in a small row of seats in a well-lighted, big-windowed room, facing once again the row of uniformed agents in front of computers. They asked what happened at JFK. Was I fingerprinted, they asked? No, I told them; I couldn’t remember being fingerprinted, though it was a discombobulating day after a tiring 12-hour flight back from Ghana, so I could be mistaken. In any case, the tallest agent took me to the back and had me press my fingers, one by one, on a digital scanner. He was a little rushed and at times the scans wouldn’t take. Relax, he kept telling me. I think he knew that wasn’t so easy under the circumstances.

The agent in charge of the row of desks explained that the fingerprints would now be electronically attached to my passport record. Every time it’s scanned, it’ll come back showing that I am not the David Hill being sought. He wasn’t sure why that wasn’t done at JFK two months ago.

The one disappointing thing is I never got to learn the stories of the other eight or 10 people also being detained. If you search the internet for Customs and Border Protection, you get a lot of articles and rants about being detained either at the border or at an international airport, many by people who aren’t U.S. citizens and who look Middle Eastern or South Asian or Latin or black, or are coming from what others describe as sketchy countries, meaning Latin America or Southeast Asia. Many of the rants accuse the CBP of racial and ethnic profiling, and indeed, my furtive glances in the larger room left me with the impression that most of my fellow secondary review subjects looked that way -- though while I was waiting, a white family that looked like mom, dad, and two elementary school-age kids were brought in; they looked and sounded vaguely European, but I couldn’t be sure.

But I can’t presume the CBP was profiling. I don’t know why any of these people were being detained. They might have met the physical description of wanted people. They might not have had their passports in order. They might have misunderstood the duty rules. They might not have had sufficient English to answer the gate agents’ questions. They might also be up to no good for all I know. I can only relate what I saw and heard and what happened to me, and I know I might have been the beneficiary of white privilege or U.S.-citizen privilege. I was indeed the last one in but first one out, just as at JFK two months earlier. Or not: The CBP might deal with this all the time and has the routine down pat.

In handcuffs, though, I sure didn’t feel privileged. Let me be clear: My experience is not remotely the same as that of black people, especially big, young black men, or of anyone who looks Middle Eastern or South Asian or Latino, or like a strung-out meth or heroin addict or homeless person or immigrant with little English ability, and has said they think they’re profiled by the CBP or local law enforcement. And I don’t mean to disparage the border agents. Quite the contrary: Theirs is undoubtedly a tough job. It’s tedious yet tension-filled: You have to be the bad guy and detain people you all but know aren’t a threat, but who wants to be the agent who lets in the next terrorist or who lets through a rampaging criminal? Politics aside, enforcing immigration law and keeping the borders secure is an important job. I’m glad they’re doing it.

But it’s good to get a little empathy education and know what it’s like to be completely powerless and vulnerable through no fault of your own. A mile in someone’s shoes, grace of God, all that stuff. I wasn’t really afraid. All the same, I was glad when it was over.

I can't even imagine being actually arrested and charged with a crime you didn't commit, held in jail and having to get a lawyer and making bail to get home. I know many people don't have to imagine.

The desk agent explained that the fingerprints weren’t foolproof. They should enable me to move on through next time I’m coming back to the country, but something could happen with the wanted man, for instance; I couldn’t quite follow the details.

Today, I found a page on the CBP website about what to do if you’re frequently stopped while traveling or crossing the border. It seems to mostly explain how to complain if you think you are being stopped unfairly -- I don’t think I was -- and how to correct information about yourself. It also says you can file under federal freedom-of-information law for what the Department of Homeland Security has about you. Check back on the blog to see what I find out.

I told the desk agent that getting into Canada Friday was no problem, taking all of 45 seconds. He had no explanation other than evidently they use a different system. It’s up to Canada, he said.

He had one more piece of advice.

If I ever cross back in at Detroit, he said, the agents will draw their guns and have me exit the car at gunpoint. The wanted man is listed as armed and dangerous, and at the Detroit border crossing, well, it’s just their policy. They don’t mess around.

So much for crossing through southern Ontario on the way to Chicago.

Meanwhile, Denise says I should take her name. I’m not ruling it out.

Having a beer with Chomsky

I’m thinking an IPA might be in order, but then again, is that a manufactured desire? I mean, hoppiness is not everyone’s thing. I could see a down-to-earth, authentic working man’s quencher, but adjuncts are out; what would the MIT AAUP say about undercutting solidarity and the gig economy even if it’s just a play on words?

Don’t even talk to me about a Bud or a Miller or a Coors. Talk about your world-corporate syndicate products. Are they even allowed in here? Heavens no, and thank goodness. There’s a place for a nip of capitalism run amok, but this is not it.

Maybe a wheat beer. A hefeweizen could hit the spot. But that might be deceptive, what with the apricot flavor actually from yeast, not fruit, plus they’re kind of spendy and showy. I’m no snob. I know what I like. But I don’t want to be elitish. Something on the malty side could work, but what would ordering induced sweetness say about me?

Belgians? No. I don’t want to put on airs.

The answer might be a regional like a Yuengling or Olympia or a Genny. Now, those are good, honest, proletariat beers, hanging on from a different time and reflective of a New Deal social contract. Truth be told, though, they’re underwhelming and I could come across as self-conscious and forced-ironic, and he’d see right through me.

So I’ll have a Sam Adams: Established but anti-corporate, middle-of-the-road, and I can defend it as what everyone else is having. And hey, in Cambridge, it’s semi- sorta local. It arrives unopened and I have to ask for an opener; it’s a little uncomfortable. I’m nervous and pour it too fast and the head is just out of control.

Prof. Chomsky reads the menu, looks at the taps, squints and gets a Do Good Ale from his hometown. He leaves a good tip.

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Inspired by the fall film series at Utica College.

A pick-up game along the N1 highway in Accra.

This is why the United States will never be a power in international soccer.

In the Ghana I saw, makeshift fields seemed to be all over the place. If not, decent if uninviting fields abounded. They were at every school, it seemed, even if they're just a big open space of packed dirt with some goals at either end.

On a visit to the botanical gardens at Arburi, I saw a co-ed group of middle-school-aged kids on a field trip spend much of their lunch break playing a pick-up game on a grassy field.

American towns, by contrast, have baseball fields, but how often do you see kids out on them in pick-up games? I'm sure it happens -- I did it some when I was a kid - but not like this. I also don't doubt that there are kids all over the United States kicking soccer balls around with one another. But more often, kids are playing only on organized teams or under coaching, either from a parent or club-team coach or some other adult.

In Ghana, as I suspect in most of the world, there's little competition from other sports. You play football if you play team sports. Sure, there's running, some basketball, maybe boxing. Ghana recently had its first Olympic swimmer. But to many, it seems to me, "sports" means football, ie, soccer.

But I think there's more at play here. For one thing, there's a different mindset to parenting. Kids are left more to their own devices. Few parents and grandparents seem to think it's their job to keep kids busy all the time.

In my three-plus-weeks sample, I did see a few organized games, including with uniforms and coaches. But mostly it was kids on their own, developing ball control or defensive skills, passing, field tactics, communication -- the whole array of what it takes to play the sport. Sure, they might not get the sophisticated early coaching American gets get, but they replace that with simply playing more and figuring it out on their own. When they do get good coaching, they already know the game pretty well and can advance more quickly. They stick with it because they want to, and aren't diverted by adults who, in America at least, too often discourage kids who don't show promise early on. Ghanaian kids can stick with it through pure desire. You can be a late bloomer, because nobody's watching.

Separated by a common language

Ghana has appeal to an American near-rookie international traveler because its official language is English. But there's English, and then there's English.

Between the British-ish accent and the fact that English is not most Ghanaians' first language, communication proved not as easy as I'd expected. It seems that in everyday conversation, most people talked in Ga, Twi or Ewe, some of the most widely spoken local languages. I speak not a word of any.

But even in English, I had trouble understanding many people, and many people had trouble understanding me, whether at a shop, boarding a tro tro or even in hotels that cater to European and North American tourists.

I had to resort to having Denise, an honorary Ghanaian by virtue of having spent years there doing her dissertation research, in effect translate.

But it's not just accents that made communicating a trick. There's also context:

Please, have you experience using foreign idioms?

I have some errands but I'll be coming.

Where shall I alight to get to your place?

I'll get a drop.

"Ssssssss!"

Boss, do you need units?

Translations:

Excuse me, but do you know what I mean by "idiom"?

I'll be right back after I run some errands.

Where do I get off the tro tro to get to your house?

I'll call a cab.

Sir, would you like to buy some airtime for your cell phone?

Hey, excuse me, excuse me!

I'm sure it works the other way. Just to play devil's advocate,  -- who! There I go. That could easily be misconstrued in Ghana. Not to mention things like "hit it out of the park," "hail Mary," "on ice," "call a cab," "missed the bus."

And then there are terms that, not matter how well-intended, are easily mistranslated. I'm sure the Swedish factory where my old Volvo sedan was built thought it made perfect sense to place bi-lingual a sticker on the inside lid of the trunk to explain how to quickly change a tire. Little did they know that the word for "speed" is recognizable to an English speaker but means something else entirely. So the first word of instructions on the otherwise unintelligible half of the explanatory label was: Fart.

And it was clearly meant as an imperative verb.

Signs in particular are troublesome. I hesitated to include these as they may come across as making fun of non-native English speakers. But I offer them as a way of showing the dangers of lifting words out of cultural context. I'm sure many American phrases would be equally hilarious or nonsensical to many Ghanaians, and that's really the point.

If you have any signs or expressions from another English-speaking country that would be absurd, comical or otherwise way out of place out of context, please share in a comment.

There's some buzz about the Ghana National Association of Teachers.

Why shouldn't there be an abandoned helicopter at the Aburi Botanical Gardens?

I mean, the gardens also have a sampling of important tree crops in Ghana, including cocoa; several trees planted to commemorate visits by foreign and domestic important people; two cafes; a former colonial-era hotel; a wonderful totem-pole-like carved tree; and an exquisite row of towering coconut palms.

It's a fascinating thing. But there is no sign explaining why it's there, how long it's been there, and why it's apparently never moved from its final resting spot.

Ok, let me come clean: I didn't stop an ask anyone. Denise, a Ghana veteran, didn't know either.

So I did what any self-respecting first-time traveler would do. I asked Google.

I haven't gotten a good answer yet. I went through several pages of the 6,400-plus pages Google says contain "Aburi Botanical Gardens helicopter" and found many mentions. People have put up pictures on tripadvisor, on Flickr, and videos on You Tube. Travel pieces in Ghana media have mentioned it but with, so far as I've found, no explanation as to why it's there.

Perhaps the most useful result was a travelogue blog entry on the site of the European Palm Society made, evidently, by a helicopter enthusiast. It identifies the machine as a Westland Whirlwind helicopter. Such craft were first built in the 1950s in Britain and, I surmise, were sold or shared with other countries' militaries, though it's important to note that Ghana was then a British colony.

Did a British official fly to Aburi in the helicopter, which then broke down and was left when Ghana gained independence in 1957? Did the British figure why bother flying it out? Or did the contingent figure they'd found paradise and never wanted to leave?

Was the helicopter used in one of Ghana's military coups? But why would coup-ists feel the need to land in the botanical gardens? Were they just getting of of Accra for the weekend like everybody else? Then the coup ended and they figured they'd just leave it. It was too much trouble to refuel and fly out. They could just drive home anyway, or take a tro tro, a drop, whatever. Or what I'd do: Just stay in Aburi.

I'm going with that.

But we'd welcome any better ideas -- and the real story -- in comments.

I am back from my first time in Africa

Arburi, Ghana

I have some things to say about my three-week visit to Ghana, my first time to what we call a developing country, which is where most of the people in the world live:

It’s trite, but people really live the same way wherever they are. They wake, they bathe, they eat and they go off to school, work or some place and make their way home, where they make meals and rest or recreate and do it over again the next day. Everyone needs a place to sleep, clothes, shoes, transportation and wholesome, nutritious food, and to have a place in society. This might seem obvious but it should not be taken for granted. Again, it’s a cliche, but we really are more alike than different.

But the details vary, and they matter.

Cocoa pods on a cocoa tree. Cocoa remains a major agricultural product of Ghana.

Ghanaians seem to sweep daily first thing, whereas Americans clean later in the day or weekly or not at all. Americans value external cleanliness and maintenance; Ghanaians value the internal more. Also, because the days are the same length all year less than a degree north of the equator, Ghanaians get going early. They’re on their way by 7 a.m., or earlier. I suppose this is true in much of the United States, too, but it seemed ingrained in everyone there.

It’s nice that the sun comes up by 5:45 or so every day but it would be a drag that it’s dark by 6:30 every day of the year. I appreciate summer and daylight saving time more now. Same for the variability of the seasons in the temperate latitudes.

Clean air is precious. Dusty, smokey, putrid air is bad and should not be subjected on anyone, but I know it has been for millennia and will be for the foreseeable future. I think this is overlooked too often in discussions of climate change and the developing world. I’m all for less reliance on fossil fuels and reducing sprawl as good for the environment, but I was reminded that what is good for the environment is generally good for human beings, too.

When institutions, be they government, religious, economic or social, begin to exist primarily to keep existing, they may do more harm than good and should be reduced in size and number or abolished. But the good they do may not be obvious, especially to outsiders, and could outweigh what is seen from the outside as harm, or at least balance it. The art is judging where the balance is. Also, it’s not for outsiders to find the balance.

Citizens of nominally democratic countries increasingly believe government and politics do little if anything to actually help the great mass of the people and instead serve mainly themselves. They see national elections as mostly irrelevant to their daily lives and personal futures.

A march in Accra led by the Ghana Federation of Disability Organizations, which seeks improved enforcement of the country's 10-year-old law on rights of people with disabilities.

While they may identify with a particular political party, they see these parties as mostly just an apparatus for members to advance themselves and one another, not as a means to a truly greater good. This is true even where government actually does a respectable job day to day carrying out public functions like maintaining and building infrastructure, promoting and protecting public health, regulating commerce to mitigate the negative parts of free enterprise and capitalism, ensuring children get a basic education so they have hope of functioning as adult citizens, enforcing order and criminal law, and promoting a measure of shared national identity and civic cohesion.

DeLuxy has an advertising campaign that uses pride in democracy and national unity to promote its paint.

People aren’t reading and buying newspapers much anymore. But they like them and want them around just the same. Go figure.

People like TV whether it’s good or awful. Men will watch sports and women will watch telenovelas and beauty pageants. I am not endorsing or condemning any of this and admit there are exceptions.

Africa may be where the two biggest economies of the world compete through the rest of the 21st century, and so far, China’s prospects are looking better than the United States’. While most of the cars and trucks I saw on the roads, whether private vehicles, taxis, tro-tros or commercial cargo-hauling trucks, were Japanese or Korean and there were a few Fords and some European GM brands (Opel, mainly and a weird number of Vibes), I saw no American-nameplate dealerships on what I take to be Accra’s new-car mile. I did, however, see dealerships for Tata of India and for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Czech brands.

Meanwhile, I saw people who look East Asian all over and saw ads for flights to Guangzhou as well as BWI and London. A consumer-product brand almost as ubiquitous as Coke and Pepsi was Vitamilk, which is from Thailand. And one of the biggest middle-class housing developments -- actually, the only one -- I ran across is the work of Chinese investors. My impression is highly superficial but from what I saw, it seemed attuned to to what the Ghanaian and greater Accra market wants: An attractive but affordable stand-alone home not too far from the city but accessible to the beach and countryside. That sounds familiar.

Good roads should never be taken for granted. Nor should good public transportation.

Tro tros show how free enterprise can fill a need. I doubt they’d work here but wish someone in Utica would give it a try. Somewhere in the Mohawk Valley there must be a few people brave, smart and ambitious (or desperate) enough to be a tro tro mate.

A tro tro in greater Accra.

Chinese business people might have an advantage over Americans in Ghana because the Chinese, I suspect, are more comfortable with relationship-building and the value of family and tribal and hometown ties. Americans can certainly learn this but I suspect it’s still second-nature to most Chinese. I acknowledge I am making an irresponsibly superficial judgment here but it’s also an honest observation.

The Islamic call to prayer is a starkly beautiful sound, especially at dawn.

Charismatic Christian worship is joyful but not what I call beautiful. This is purely an aesthetic judgement on my part.

As a generality, the human psyche requires familiarity. I never understood so clearly why immigrants tend to converge once in a new place. Whether regarding foods, language (including dialects, idioms and accents), ways of greeting and the sense of one’s place socially, being an outsider perpetually is tiring and difficult, whether for a few weeks as a visitor or on a permanent basis. Being around people who share your ways of being in the world, whether all the time or in brief but reliable respites, is crucial to long-term coping in unfamiliar environments. The United States, and I presume places like Canada and Europe, must be bewildering to Ghanaians and West Africans. There are just so many subtle and small but significant differences in daily customs and ways of life and social norms. I now greatly admire those who navigate here temporarily and especially long-term. I also now understand why they tend to seek out people from home. One needs the occasional little island of familiarity when navigating the constant flow of customs and habits.

If I had to live in either a rural African village of mud-brick huts or a violent, economically depressed American inner-city neighborhood or abandoned and boarded-up rural town, I’m not sure which I’d pick. If I got a life-threatening illness, I suppose I'd rather be in the U.S. -- though I'd dread paying for it -- but suspect that’s the only advantage.

From a village near Kasoa

It’s great that almost everyone in Ghana speaks some English, but that doesn’t mean you will be able to instantly and effectively communicate with anyone. It’s not most people’s first language, and accents and idioms are as as important to language as vocabulary, grammar and syntax.

Okra -- or okro -- and boiled peanuts are good wherever you find them.

A view from the Sweet Mother Eco Resort

The Volta River from the Afrikiko Riverfront Resort.