Trouble at the Border

Posted By: TrailerSailor
Date: 6/15/08 10:25p.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

More Trouble With The U.S. Border! By Claire Damecour and Carl Carlson ( of Speed Triple) This is a warning to all who try to cross the border from Mexico into the U.S.A. My husband and I and two friends were coming back from a wonderful two week sail in the Sea of Cortez last week. We had already received notice about the agricultural restrictions and were certain to have nothing on the lengthy list in the back of our pickup truck. However, we did have 3 containers of gas, one that is specific to our Yamaha 8 horsepower engine and two 5 gallon jerry cans. As we had had quite a bit of nice sailing (and almost no motoring) we were coming home with lots of extra gas, which we couldn’t use in our diesel truck. We didn’t want to leave it in the boat in storage for 6 months. Well, we were quite rudely told by the border crossing supervisor that we had to return to Mexico as our gas tanks could not stay in the U.S.!! For every gallon of gas there was a 26 cent tax, in addition there was a 25$ administration fee and, since we could not produce receipts of purchase for the gas, a 100$ fine. Worse, they could not do the paperwork at that border crossing, we had to go back into Mexico and go to through the commercial trucking line and through that border crossing, which by the way had closed at 5 p.m. ( it was now 5:15 P.M.) and would not reopen until Monday morning (two days later!). As we had work engagements Monday morning, spending an extra three days in Nogales was not an option. There was no reasoning with this badge heavy officer, who insisted it had been the law for many years. This coming after another officer explained that the 25$ fee had just been created that week. Our only option was to walk across to the Mexican side, carrying our gas and try to dispose of it in Mexico. Not having a way to pour out of the Yamaha motor container, we hunted for someone in line with a funnel. (I really didn’t want to pour gas out onto the ground.) It was a humiliating site to find myself with beggars and vendors on the side of the road pleading with Mexican-Americans in their cars to allow me to pour gas into their tanks. No one believed us as we were calling out “free gas”. We could not leave the container there as we would need it for our next trip. Finally, someone helped us out by removing us of over 50$ worth of fuel (for free) so that we would walk back across the border, dirty and dusty, heads down, beaten by the system that protects the oil companies profits. Coming back from a great sailing vacation is always a downer, but coming home to the U.S. has been one of the worst experiences of my life. Every car was pulled over and gone through. Fines were being levied on everyone there, and people were standing in disbelief as they were being treated like criminals for possession of an apple, a can of Pork and Beans, a seashell, or in our case, for containers with gas in them. What used to be a formality, or at the most an inconvenience, is now a humiliating, degrading and frustrating experience that transforms law abiding citizens into criminals. Is this the consequence of 9/11? The defensive reaction of a paranoid country? The results of special interests groups lobbying our Congress to protect their profits by terrorizing the people? The blind interpretation of rules by people with more power than intelligence or education? (Reminiscent of Nazi Germany in which the officers were just doing as they were told.) Is the whole concept to keep Americans from leaving the country completely, for fear of retribution on the way back in, thereby cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world? Can one protect oneself from this interrogation and harassment? If they are going to pass new laws every week, I don’t see how you can. Because no matter how you try you will be in infraction of something, somewhere, sometime. Perhaps the only solution is to get in that sailboat and keep going, never to return. For the first time in my life I am ashamed to be an American.