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Subject: Why did U.S. Customs select me for search?
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2001 14:58:58 GMT
From: Richard Price <[email protected]>
Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net
Newsgroups: rec.travel.air

Last Sunday, I arrived in Chicago on a flight from Warsaw, Poland. Upon
arrival, U.S. Customs officers instructed me to proceed to the "red"
area where a very grim officer grilled me 20 minutes about my job, my
travel habits, my purchases abroad and all sorts of other semi-related
issues.

He then put on rubber gloves and searched every single thing in my
luggage. He checked for false bottoms in my sneakers. He opened pill
bottles (aspirin). He felt inside the bag for false bottoms. When he
found I had nothing more interesting than a souvenir ceramic butter dish
and a bottle of vodka, he let me go. He never told me why I had been
selected for search.

I'm male, 42, Caucasian, with blond hair & blue eyes. I was wearing
khaki slacks and a blue polo shirt. I looked like a freaking ad for
middle America! I could not possibly be less threatening looking.

My question is this: Why was I selected for search? Do they look at a
person's travel patterns? (I travel several times a year to far-flung
destination.) Or is it purely random?

Richard