[tialaramex]

They cannot _legally_ deny entry.

But what exactly are you going to do about it? If you have a lot of money maybe you can pay lawyers to go to court to demand you be allowed to enter, but there's a good chance the court will be persuaded that since you're not there there's nothing to discuss. And why aren't you there? Because they never allowed you to enter the country.

The "No fly" list allows them to make it essentially impossible to enter without even the inconvenience of actually turning you away at the border.

Unlike Nature's laws, our laws are not facts. Writing that "We hold these truths to be self-evident" did not make them so, Americans are free only if and to the extent that all Americans make them free, and in the modern era I'm afraid there's precious little sign of that.

[koenigdavidmj]

For all the other shenanigans that they’ve done, can you come up with even one case where an American citizen has been detained indefinitely at the border?

Also, you’re already across once you meet the border people. You’re not in no-man’s-land; the border is infinitely thin and you are already in the US at the checkpoint. This is the simplest habeas corpus petition ever.

[ilikehurdles]

There have been several cases where legal American Citizens have been put into deportation proceedings or formally deported. All it takes is for a border agent to choose not to believe the documents you’re handing over. There is no rule at the federal level that entitles noncitizens to trials. So a border agent declaring you a noncitizen without court oversight strips you of your constitutional rights. One US citizen was detained by ICE for 3 years, other reports exist of 1-year detentions. It all really depends on how poor you are and how backed up (by design) the system is.

Anyway, a citizen being turned away, shipped back, or put into deportation at the airport isn’t a far reach from any of this.

[dudul]

Do you have a link to any of these stories? I have heard of US citizens being detained and bullied at the border, but they were always eventually admitted into the country after a few hours of "purgatory".

Where would you even try to deport a US citizen? "Here, Spain, we don't think this guy is a US citizen, his passport doesn't look legit enough, can you take him?"

[ilikehurdles]

The 3-year detention story: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/01/540903038...

An incomplete wikipedia list with a number of citizens that were wrongfully deported from the U.S.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Americans_from_...

U.S. citizens having deportation detainers placed on them is suprisingly common: https://www.cato.org/publications/immigration-research-polic...

This guy was held for weeks: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/04/born-philad...

U.S. citizen detained without charge for a year and then freed: https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/detention/us-cit...

There are dozens of stories like these. I've listed a few, but to go further I'd recommend doing a web search.

[dudul]

Thanks for sharing. I guess the difference is that none of these stories involves crossing the border (or maybe I missed some details, that was a lot to read :). Still positively frightening that the system could so badly fail.