I’ve crossed many international borders, starting with being born in Japan on a military base. I don’t remember entering The US since I was barely over a year old, but I didn’t leave The States again until I was 22 as a Peace Corps Volunteer and later as an expat math and science teacher at various American and private schools.
I literally fell across the border walking into Zimbabwe from Zambia. One time, I had to run back to the last train stop in Zambia because I missed getting my passport stamped since I was using the bathroom when the immigration agent passed through my cabin and had already exited the train, which was about to cross into Tanzania. And the time I landed in Turkey, I was tempted to jump back on the plane when I discovered that Americans had to pay $100 just to enter the country. There was a brief moment when the immigration agent saw that I was born in Japan, looked at me closer and asked if I was Japanese. A part of me was so tempted to ask how much was the visa if I were Japanese, but I made life easier for myself and said “no.” Being detained in a Turkish prison for fraud or whatever my illegal actions would have been called sounds like a good story, but I’d much rather write a fictional account of that.
Most of my border crossings have been via airports, especially when I worked in Egypt, South Korea and Honduras, but when I lived in Mexico, half the time I drove, especially if I were going to The States. I’d moved to Egypt a month before 9/11; so when I returned to The States for Christmas and summer breaks, I was ALWAYS the randomly searched passenger. That ended just as soon as I’d moved to Mexico—except that one time.
I’d been living in Monterrey, Mexico for two years and had become very comfortable with driving to the border on a Saturday morning, shopping in either Laredo or McAllen, Texas for the day, then driving back in the late afternoon. Normally, all I showed border control was my American driver’s license and that was that. But this one time, for no good reason, I showed my passport instead. The same passport with all those Egyptian, Emirati, Jordanian and Turkish stamps. Granted, I’d had immigration stamps from Germany, Greece and Tanzania, but those weren’t the red flags. I had to pull over and explain my travels before entering The States.
First, one border patrol guy questioned me, but then he wrote on an orange piece of paper, “traveled through many countries in the past two years,” which shouldn’t sound suspicious for people who love to travel, right? I had to wait for another guy who sat in the air-conditioned building to interview me further. As I waited, thinking about how surreal being detained in my own country was, my friend, who happened to be a white woman, just fumed.
“What about me? Why aren’t they questioning me?” She grumbled. “I’ve got Guatemalan stamps on my passport! I could be a drug dealer.”
I didn’t address her indignation or bother to inform her that a White woman with Guatemalan stamps in her passport wasn’t nearly as fear-inducing as a woman with international brown skin who’d travelled in predominately Muslim countries. Traveling while Black—the international version.
I’d actually experienced that phenomenon for the first time in the Charles De Gaulle airport after finishing my two-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer. My dreads looked rough and although I wore my best attire, I looked grungy since nothing about my appearance really said, “American” to the extent that the immigration officials had automatically handed me a form to fill out as if I were a foreigner going to The US without even speaking to me.
As I struggled to remember the six years of French I’d taken in high school and college, I wondered to myself, “How the fuck does anyone manage to escape this country if they don’t understand French?”
I finally jumped through that hoop, handed my passport and form to another agent who yelled, “Why are you filling out immigration papers? You’re an American!”
I laughed nervously and explained that someone had given it to me. Somehow, I got through that hoop, but I was irritated. I made a mad dash to the terminal, boarding pass in hand, thinking all the bullshit would be over once I was on the plane. Yet, I was stopped once again in mid-stride when an airline worker, asking to see my passport.
“Oh, you’re an American!” she said with so much shock, I was done.
“Oh, you’re surprised?” I responded as an ugly American.
Out of nowhere, a security guy materialized, got in my face and barked, “What did you say to her?”
As I drew breath to cuss him out like I knew how, the airline worker responded with honey, glitter and rainbows, “Oh, she’s tired.” She handed back my passport, gently placed her other hand on my back and guided me in the direction I’d been originally heading in the first place. International incident averted.
So, the second guy at the US-Mexico border, who sat at a desk that seemed built into the wall, beckoned me over to answer his questions. He asked me about why I’d traveled to those other countries and why I was in Mexico and why I wanted to enter The US and how long I was planning to stay.
At that last question, I nearly lost my cool. “You realize as an American citizen, I can stay in The States for the rest of my life, right?” Fortunately for me, he was in a conversational mood and my question didn’t worsen the situation. Then I added, “Of course, if I didn’t return, I’d lose my teaching job; so, I’m only making a shopping trip today.”
My conversation proved to him that I was on the up and up and I imagine that they ran a quick check on my passport, which was all I wanted them to do in the first place—look at the picture, my name and all that front-of-the-passport information. I didn’t think they’d go flipping through the damn thing and reading all the entrance and exit stamps. Granted, I’d had extra pages sewn in because I traveled a lot, but even so…
He returned my passport and on my way out, I asked the first guy if I could have my slip of paper where he’d written me up for traveling a lot in two years. He said “no,” which was astonishing since those used slips of paper littered the ground. I’m sure no one gave a shit about keeping them as a record since they were so carelessly discarded, but I think he didn’t want me to have any evidence of my brief “detainment and interrogation” as my friend kept calling it.
At any rate, for future US-Mexico border crossings, I only used my driver’s license and had no problems. (Now, that’s the closest any story of mine has ended with “and she lived happily ever after!”)
