Extreme Petting (Flying While PAKISTAN - Part 4)

Parts 1 and 2 and 3 in this continuing series can be found here and here and here.

The past few days of protests at U.S. airports around the nation have been deeply moving and inspiring, but they also beg a fundamental question:  Where were these protestors during the ordinary racism of the Obama administration’s doubling-down on brown, black, and Muslim travelers to the United States over the past several years?  The Trump administration has certainly introduced a new level of chaos into the administration of U.S. Airport Law, but this set of legal conventions and practices has been deeply awful for many years now.  Moreover, this body of law’s problems will not be resolved by the kinds of ad hoc habeas corpus petitions, or even attempts for class action certifications, that we are witnessing in real-time.  To my mind, what is needed is something akin to the prison abolition movement, reframing airports away from being spaces of incarceration, to places of sympathy, hospitality, and justice.  To be sure, the past few days’ protests in airports—the fact that many of these protests have actually been happening within airport arrivals and baggage collection areas—have been nothing less than inspiring, transforming these places into spaces of (nascent) democratic dissent and debate.  But so much more is required—indeed, not only a dismantling of the Trump ‘customs and border protection’ project, but also the Obama-era airport project too.

There are several dimensions to such a dismantling effort but, for one, we must do something about the practice of Secondary Review, including its reintroduction of Colored Waiting Rooms into the experience of U.S. travel.  In previous blog-posts, I’ve described the spooky and racist Secondary Review process that thousands of (almost exclusively) non-white travelers are subjected to every day in U.S. airports.  It’s not enough that most people get released from these ‘special’ rooms; their segregated existence—architectural and racial—itself is a fundamental problem.  Their existence alchemizes John Fitzgerald Kennedy into Jim Fucking Krow.

Concerning JFK (in either formulation), I also believe that we need to be bringing critique not only to the overtly racist aspects of U.S. Airport Law, but also its sexual—and sexually violent—aspects.  The use of naked scanners in U.S. airports is certainly one aspect of all this, as is the TSA's fascination with touching African-American hair at airport security checkpoints, but so is what goes on in the secluded and segregated interrogations in U.S. airports and about which we rarely hear about.

I’m writing from Pakistan presently, where I’m spending the second half of a sabbatical.  When news of Trump’s recent executive order reached here, there was both surprise and shock that Pakistan had not been included in the initial list of countries subject to the travel ban.  (And if there is any explanation for this, other than clerical error, it has to somehow involve the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons.)  But then came the unsurprising word that, while not being formally banned, Pakistanis were going to be subject to what has been termed ‘extreme vetting,’ or what I think we might more accurately call—à propos Trump—‘extreme petting.’

I say this not in jest.  My last post in this series ended with me reentering the United States, at San Francisco airport, at the end of 2014.  I was re-entering the country after spending a year away, first in Germany on a research fellowship, and then as a Visiting Professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).  After navigating my second Secondary Review on my voyage from Lahore to Saint Louis—one infused with both racism and homophobia—and then a gauntlet of dogs at baggage collection, I was then detained again by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for a thorough examination of and questioning about the contents of all my luggage.  As I approached the counter where this happened, a portly middle-aged white man was assigned to go through my junk, and my exhausted heart skipped a beat.  In my life, I have often faced the most scrutiny of and skepticism about my interest in Pakistan from other white people—characterized by them as either hopelessly clueless about the threat that Pakistan threats to Western civilization (such as it may be) or, alternatively, as a kind of race traitor.  These sentiments have been expressed by academics and family alike, each invested in enforcing their own kind of anti-miscegenation norms.

As it happens, this CBP officer appeared to be suffering from his own form of exhaustion.  After he cursorily examined the contents of my two very large and heavy suitcases, as well as my overstuffed travel backpack, I decided to push my luck by asking him why I was being treated like this.  After he got me to promise that I wouldn’t publicize his name, he looked at his computer, and remarked:  “So I am not permitted to tell you why you are being flagged for this kind of scrutiny, but I can tell you that it is bullshit.”  He then proceeded to express frustration with having to go through the belongings, week after week, of regular and recognizable business travelers that passed through SFO. 

Perhaps suffering not only from jet-lag, but my own version of Stockholm Syndrome, I thanked him (?), and then quickly got the hell out of there.  Flashing through my mind were images of how it could have been much worse and, indeed, had been much worse—mental images not based on conjecture or third-person narratives but my own experience of being threatened with anal rape by a CBP officer at Detroit Metropolitan (DTW) airport on December 31, 2011.

In entering the U.S. at DTW that day, I was returning from a month-long research trip to India in conjunction with a long-standing research project of mine on non-state Muslim courts in India.  After passing passport control, and then collecting my baggage, I was exiting the customs area when I was pulled aside by a CBP officer for a ‘random’ baggage search.  Given that these arrival spaces are highly surveilled, however, it’s hard to believe that there is ever anything random about the selection procedure at work here:  CBP officers clearly have the tools to surveil, track, and stop who they want to question and inspect, from the moment they take off in a foreign airport, to the moment their images flash across cameras deployed at U.S. airports.  At the very least, the fact that the other people who had been directed to the baggage inspection area at this time were all black individuals from West Africa indicated that some sort of pernicious litmus test was being deployed here.

Without any offer of assistance—again, I cannot overemphasize the lack of adherence to basic norms of hospitality and respect at U.S. airports—I was ordered to lift my very heavy luggage on to the inspection tables, and to open them.  An officer then proceeded to meticulously go through each and every item, seeming to look for something specific.  Whatever that thing may have been, Urdu-language books that I had purchased in Delhi (and declared) soon attracted this CBP officer’s attention.

And that, my friends, is the death knell of this kind of customs search.  While widely spoken in north India, Urdu is written in a combined Arabic and Persian script and, moreover, is a national language of Pakistan.

I was soon barraged by a number of questions of why I had these books, what I did for a living, the nature of my research, and so on.  I answered these questions truthfully and without protest, given that—however hostilely and rudely they were posed—I knew they could be framed as ‘reasonably’ connected to confirming my identity and bona fides.  Soon thereafter, however, this officer started opening my fieldwork notebooks, where I had taken extensive notes (in English) from an interview with a Muslim woman (whose name I had anonymized) who had recently gotten a divorce from one of the Muslims courts I was doing research on.  Moreover, the officer started intensely reading my interview notes, asking me questions about this woman and her divorce from a mentally unstable husband.  This time, however, I refused to answer the CBP officer’s question.  This was not only because my research had gone through a federally-mandated Institutional Review Board (IRB) process insistent on ensuring confidentiality for interview subjects, but also because I found this officer’s questions prurient and creepy.  Why was he so interested in this woman?

This CBP officer tried to insist that I had to answer this line of creepy queries, which then sparked a back-and-forth about the IRB, the Constitution, and whether or not—as the officer claimed—“none of that law applies on the border.”  At some point, a supervisor was called over and, rather than exercising a calming influence, he began to rage that I had—just had—to answer their questions.  “This is the border!!!”  Without exaggeration, his behavior was truly frightening.  When I pointed out the banners plastered all over the international arrivals area proclaiming “Welcome to the United States.  Your Professional and Friendly Customs and Border Protection!”—observing that, despite being a citizen, I felt neither welcome nor a friend of the United States—this supervisor (whose name-tag I recorded) told me that if I didn’t answer the questions that they could “do this the hard way” and that I would be subject to a cavity search.  In other words, if I didn’t answer their completely irrelevant and inappropriate questions that either he or his co-workers would anally rape me.

In a state of dazed incredulity, I explained to this CBP supervisor why I still felt that I couldn’t or shouldn’t answer his questions.  In response, he then started screaming:  “SHUT UP!  YOU SHUT UP!  SHUT UP!  SHUT UP NOW!”  And at this point, then, at least four CBP officers surrounded me.  I couldn’t see beyond them.  I thought I was going to be tackled. 

As it happened, these CBP officers had stepped in to protect me from their supervisor.  I remained standing, and he was led away, in an apoplectic fit by another CBP officer.

This particular story does not end there—more details in another future post—but I am able to say that I escaped involuntary anal penetration that New Year’s Eve in Detroit Metropolitan airport.  That being said, this rape threat experience was scarring and, moreover, a warning that we do not really know what is happening in Secondary Review at U.S. airports right now nationwide.  The scenes from the past few days of refugees and visa- and green card-holders appearing in U.S. airport arrivals areas, joining family and friends and supporters, are encouraging—but we have little idea what kinds of violences were perpetrated against them while these individuals were held in detention by U.S. government officials.  Just as disturbingly, the newly announced policies of ‘extreme vetting’ for Pakistanis (and, soon, for many others surely) are entirely predictable in how far they will venture, in how deeply they will try to humiliate.  Ultimately then, I believe that when U.S. citizens—liberal, conservative, or progressive—stand by the ‘reasonableness’ of Secondary Review and other wild and unaccountable forms of extreme vetting under discussion, they take on their own starring role in future episodes of Access Hollywood, and have decided to participate in their own form of extreme petting.

To be continued.  Comments will be moderated.

Comments

[Captain Hruska Carswell, Continuance King]

The answer is simple. It's all about perception. It's really not the facts that count, but what folks think about or how you can make them feel about the facts. A criminal trial is a perfect example. Take a retail theft. Is it a relatively minor first time offense deserving prosecutorial diversion (theft school) or economic terrorism that destroys livelihoods?

[Adam]

Professor Redding-I hope that you filed a complaint with CBP. The absence of complaints when such incidents happen is part of what allows this kind of abuse to last. What should not be lost and it almost is in your post, is that the abusive supervisor's junior officers recognized the abusive behavior for what it was and came over to protect you. They deserve the credit for that, because they did their job and in a circumstance that likely would result in a reprimand from a belligerent supervisor.

[Jeff Redding]

Adam, thanks for your comment and suggestion. As it happens, I knew a lawyer who worked at the ACLU's Detroit office and I immediately got in contact with her when I got back to Saint Louis. I worked with her and another lawyer there to draft a formal letter of complaint that was submitted to the appropriate authorities a few months later. I was also taking handwritten notes during the entire encounter, recording officers' names, so that helped to make sure the letter was informative enough to instigate particularized disciplinary action. The ACLU warned me, though, that I got off relatively easy at this airport--it's notorious, apparently, for abusive practices--and we then never did hear anything back. But, yes, I agree that reporting this stuff is crucial, and I've been in contact with another lawyer at CAIR about how to handle re-entry from Pakistan in a few months.

[Anon Prof]

Just a comment on one aspect of your post that might go unnoticed....

I appreciate your adherence to your IRB responsibilities. As someone who has had to go through the HHS training and submission process, I know well all the duties researchers owe to their subjects. I worry that many researchers in your situation that day might have abandoned those duties quickly.

[Jeff Redding]

Anon Prof: Yes, this is an important aspect of this all. When I tried to describe to them the IRB, they clearly had no comprehension of it--I half suspected that they might be thinking it was one of the acronym security agencies!!!--but kept on telling me that it did not apply because we were on the border. Yet IRB guidelines apply not just domestically but extra-territorially as well.

[Adam]

Prof Redding, if you want to understand what it's like at the border (POE and PFI) you should talk with immigration lawyers. My colleagues and I could tell stories...