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Comment by aazaa | Hacker News Reader

> They say they were driving with family members on 3 October when, to avoid an animal, they veered onto a small road.

> A police officer then pulled them over, told them they were in the US state of Washington and arrested them.

Horrible and inexcusable experience to be sure, but the explanation for how they ended up in the US needs some work.

There are loads of spots along the border there where the US/Canada separation is only a grassy median [0]. So it's odd but not unbelievable.

There's an even more extreme example to the east near Vermont where the border runs through individual buildings in the town of Stanstead [1,2] and there are just white lines on some streets you're not supposed to cross.

[0] https://goo.gl/maps/XasmFG9Ms6FJUUsRA

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/5aWrrN5TjuE8ennS7

[2] https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/stanstead-town-bor...

Pretty funny that there's no street view for the laneways crossing the border in your second line. The SV driver was like "yeah nope, not going there."

Honest question: How are people supposed to cross the border right there? Clearly there's a maintained and passable road there -- there's a stop sign, and then a white line where the border is. Are you supposed to have some pre-approval like TSA pre-check? Call ahead? Stop and wait for a Border Agent to come running out of the library? Go by better to ask forgiveness than ask permission?

Self reporting is a thing for citizens. Some unmanned crossings have phonebooths that directly connect to an agent.

Edit: I'm not sure that these still exist as a standalone thing. They may have been phased out after 9/11.

The article does say "South of Vancouver". I'm from the Vancouver area and I can't say I've seen random unmarked roads crossing the border (there are some exceptions further east including some campgrounds that are in the US but are only accessible from the Canadian side). It's pretty easy to accidentally cross the border on foot though.

Over the last few months there have been a lot more stories about the US/Canada border. Apparently a lot more people are getting barred arbitrarily from entering the US.

I would normally expect these sort of incident should be resolved with a warning and returning to the other country. It seems for some reason someone decided to make an example out of these guys.

You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that the entire border between the US and Canada has fencing or other barriers. Sometimes there's just a road with an easily-missed sign or plaque. For example: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-really-parts-of-the-US–Canad...

Not sure why the parent is being downvoted. More detail of what happened would surely be informative. Ideally including the perspective of the arresting officer. Why were they pulled over? Why did he suspect they were in the country illegally? Lots of unanswered questions here.

They claim that they were stopped for crossing the border.

> Michael turned onto an unmarked road and moments later, multiple police cars and Border Patrol agents appeared and told him: ‘You crossed an international border’, the family claim.

From: https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/15/british-family-jailed-swervin...

Check out the follow up:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50067575

Thanks for posting that. Have to be careful not to rush to judgement on anything these days.

There's several places where only a small ditch separates the two countries.

I get that, and veering over to the other side to avoid a badger or something is understandable, but why would you stay on the other side at that point instead of going back to the road you were originally on? There must be some detail not reported to the public that made it make sense.

"moments later". It takes time to turn around.

'Oh, this road is a lot less bumpy and is also going in the right direction, let's just keep following it'.

Did this across a European border by accident. Took us 10 minutes to notice the different style of road furniture.

"There must be some detail not reported to the public that made it make sense."

Is something people say over and over to try NOT to accept bad things happen a lot to innocent people. It's not always in bad faith and I am not saying it is for you (though it increasingly IS online especially), since we are generally taught as long as we are "good" that it will all be ok and that authority are the good guys. But real life proves that not to be the case much of the time and this disconnect is hard for people to accept so they say things like the above...blame victims...call it fake news etc.

For me it's a natural reaction to seeing sensationalized stories. Step back and ask yourself what the reporter is leaving out of the story, especially when the story seems outrageous on the surface.

Sometimes the story is completely right, but a lot of times they're omitting key details that make it much more sensible.

If that! When I visited northern MN, the boundary waters area, I could have very easily strayed into Canada on the back roads I was traveling. They weren't even paved, there were no ditches, it's mostly water/marsh/swamp up there.

There's just some small road signs here and there notifying of the need to cross into Canada via the checkpoints on the main roads, but they're often posted where you enter the unmaintained gravel road - not right at the border. These back roads were established long before we cared about crossing the Canadian border. If you happen to be camping or canoeing in the area for an extended period, it's very likely you'll get turned around and accidentally go north instead of south on one of these back roads and find yourself in Canada when you get back to driving.

Furthermore since they're not really well maintained, it's possible you'll be taking turns to avoid washouts or other obstructions like fallen trees. You might stray into Canada just to reach your destination because the preferred route is out of service.

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