I flew through a terrible storm this past summer when returning from Puerto Vallarta to Denver that grounded 800 flights for hours. The flight was horrible, in the oldest Southwest Airlines plane I have ever flown on! It sat on the tarmac for an hour with no air conditioning before taking off into very high winds. The electrical system wasn’t working including the AC and internet and we bounced through the air for over 6 hours. The flight attendants were strapped in during most of the flight, with very limited services. The 6 1/2 hours of misery were nothing to what I experienced first hand next.

Once we landed and started through Customs, ICE swept through and cleared half our plane of families, young people and the elderly. This happened to every plane that had finally received clearance to land after the storm. People were crying, families were separated and everyone looked lost and confused. Flights from Trump’s list of unfavorable countries with travel bans experience this same thing every single week according to a flight steward I had sat next to on the plane, These passengers are coming into America legally, but once they land, they are treated like criminals.

TSA and ICE agents are now questioning all travelers about their immigration status at airports, detaining individuals and families, after they were already cleared by the home country.

These changes mark a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrant mobility, and the consequences will be devastating for asylum seekers, mixed-status families, and immigrant communities nationwide.

As I started to leave the airport, a young TSA agent grabbed my luggage trolley forceably and told me I had to go back through security. I told him I had just cleared customs and refused to go back through. According to an older TSA agent who watched this, the younger agents like to harass American citizens that return from International locations. Why? I have no idea.

The next day I realized my luggage locks were jammed and I couldn’t open up my suitcase. According to the Delsey luggage website, TSA often jams the locks for the same idiotic reasons, and recommended returning it to have it opened. Costco said people return jammed suitcases all the time after TSA damages the locks.

Why does TSA harass Americans returning from abroad? Just to show off their power? To punish Americans for leaving the US to visit others parts of the world? Who or what encourages agents to be so rude and condescending to fellow Americans?

This is not the America I grew up in and I want it back. Does all of this make us safer? Have we become an isolationist nation who no longer wants to be part of the global mass of human beings?

We need to band together and express our concern about our rights as US citizens that are being trampled on, as a result of banning the entry of innocent citizens from 12 countries around the world.

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