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Comment by grabcocque | Hacker News Reader

"Your response to this dilemma may vary according to your risk assessment. However, all travelers should stay calm and respectful, should not lie to border agents or physically obstruct them, and should plan for this dilemma ahead of time. Try to document or politely ask for the names, badge numbers, and agencies of the government officers you interact with."

I don't mean to be churlish but this advice is pretty weak sauce. I mean, I understand why they don't want necessarily want to admit the truth, that if you're a foreign national and you don't comply things will get nasty and you'll almost certainly be deported.

However, that sadly seems to be the truth of Trump's TSA, and if the truth stinks, don't sugar coat it.

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> the truth of Trump's TSA,

The agency that people are dealing with in this case is CBP, not TSA. TSA has no border search authority.

We put out the first version of this guide in 2011. So far we don't know for sure if border searches have gotten more prevalent or more intrusive under the Trump administration. It's very possible, but may not be clear from statistics for about a year. They've definitely been getting more press and public attention.

Of course not complying with border security as a foreigner will get you deported, I don't understand how you would expect anything else. I don't think foreigners who have refused directives from border security have ever gotten in, regardless of presidential administration.

I think the best advice in the guide is what not to do. Be polite and most importantly, don't lie. Many people may not know that even an innocuous lie to a border agent is a federal crime.

It does call it out in the guide.

>Border agents cannot deny a U.S. citizen admission to the country. However, if a foreign visitor declines, an agent may deny them entry. If a lawful permanent resident declines, agents may raise complicated questions about their continued status as a resident.

I see that, but it still doesn't fundamentally address what you should do.

1) comply - possibly incriminating yourself, endangering your security and anyone you have contact with

2) refuse, get arrested, harassed, deported and probably placed on some kind of watch list as a known troublemaker

Which should you choose?

I'm not sure there's a third choice currently.

Don't travel to the US seems to be the only 3rd option.

Also don't fly through US airspace, don't do stopovers in Canada either (because the larger Canadian airports have US officers).

If you're talking about the preclearance facilities in the Canadian airports, they only inspect people who are departing on flights to the U.S.

A big point of the guide is that different people will want to choose differently between these two bad options.

If you want to go to America you have to comply. If you are stupid enough to have incriminating information on devices you are carrying across the border then you obviously refuse.

The choice is just whether that privacy is more important than getting into America to you.

They do explicitly address that - as you yourself quoted above, travelers "... should plan for this dilemma ahead of time", i.e. depending on their personal situation, before the trip they should either be prepared to comply (ensuring beforehand that no incriminating information is accessible and full compliance, if needed, won't endanger themselves or others) or be prepared to refuse and face the consequences; if they believe that they are likely to be inspected for some reasons (the vast majority of travelers are not) then this includes making plans on how to mitigate the effects of not getting across the border.

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