United States Customs and Border Protection plans to log every person leaving the country by vehicle by taking photos at border crossings of every passenger and matching their faces to their passports, visas, or travel documents, WIRED has learned.
Reminds me of the DDR (East Germany after WW2). I thought americans hated communism/socialism? Oh wait… are they now starting to realize that authocratic and facist governments can exist regargless of the socio-economical system?
authocratic
Just being pedantic, but you are mixing up two related words here:
- autocratic means “ruled by a single person, the autocrat”
- authoritarian means “holding obedience to authority above individual freedom”
I cross the border by car every day. I just assumed this was already happening.
Yeah my biggest surprise on this is that they haven’t been doing it for years by now
Isn’t this just how borders work? How were people getting through if they didn’t match their passports? I almost got refused entry to a flight once because I grew my beard out
No, not when exiting by land. Usually it’s not controlled. I’m sure it was already monitored though, at least by license plate.
But you can easily just drive into Canada or Mexico without really noticing until you hit Canadian/Mexican border control (if you ignore all the signs)
Although often for Mexico they don’t even check you when driving in from the US
Not in the US. There’s no outbound confirmation of who leaves the county, I think at all. I can’t speak for leaving by ship, but by car and plane, you don’t hit passport control until it’s the one for the next county you enter.
It’s why when authorities in the US need to arrest someone fleeing the county, they usually do it at the plane itself.
They weren’t previously photographing people.
I’ll also mention that passports are issued by the state department, not CBP which is under the department of homeland security.
I think the problem is that when you cross the border to, let’s say, Canada, the agent you’re presenting your passport is Canadian. There’s nothing on the American side.
I’ve always thought all the information is exchanged between countries.
So, now we’re gonna see two rows of agents. The first American for the exit and the second, Canadian for the entrance. But that would create a buffer of no man’s land between the rows. Things can get interesting there.
Exit Immigration is a real thing that can be done, even if the US doesn’t normally do it. You can leave the US on a plane without any US border agent seeing your passport. Other countries will inspect your paperwork on departure, even if just to stamp it marking that you left . (And stamps seem to be generally going away, too, I was surprised to find when I last went to the UK that I didn’t get a stamp.)
US Border patrol does have the ability to check cars at the land border as they leave, they just usually don’t bother to Canada. I haven’t crossed the land border since COVID, though, so I don’t know if they are stopping cars heading out now.
I do wonder how that handful of people got nabbed at the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, who took a wrong turn onto the bridge without their paperwork, got caught. Did they make it to the Canadian side and then were told to turn around? Or were they nabbed before going across? I wonder if it makes a difference with regard to their immigration status…
If you make it to the Canadian side without papers, the Canadians will refuse you and send you back. On the way back you have to go through the american checkpoint. Each country’s boarder station is built on their own side of the boarder. That’s how they get nabbed in land crossings.
Although they can add an exit check, there isn’t the infrastructure for it. Immigration plazas widen to many lanes at the inspection stations. The outgoing side is just a normal road. Adding an exit check would either slow traffic to a crawl by checking cars on a normal road, or require expensive renovations at every highway boarder crossing. Its possible, but not something they can implement quickly or quietly.
Adding an exit check would either slow traffic to a crawl by checking cars on a normal road
Yes, this is exactly what they could do, if they wanted to. They don’t give a shit about slowing traffic, in fact they will want that because it is making what they do more visible. Their only goal is to intimidate certain people into not coming here.
That system would just be automated cameras, no agent necessary.
