Comedian says Border Patrol agents pulled him off Greyhound bus to check his status, then told him h

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Comedian says Border Patrol agents pulled him off Greyhound bus to check his status, then told him his papers were fake

“I explained to them that I was granted asylum here in the United States, and that the work permit they currently hold and the license are impossible to get unless your presence here is legal,” Mohanad Elshieky said.

By Luz Lazo January 28 at 3:06 PM

A Portland, Ore.-based comedian says U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents forced him Sunday to get off a Greyhound bus in Spokane, Wash., and show proof of citizenship. The agents then accused him of having fake documents, comedian Mohanad Elshieky said in a Twitter thread that went viral, reviving outrage about the agency’s practice of boarding intercity buses and demanding identification and proof of citizenship from passengers.

“I explained to them that I was granted asylum here in the United States, and that the work permit they currently hold and the license are impossible to get unless your presence here is legal,” said Elshieky, a native of Libya. The interrogation went on for 20 minutes, he said. “They told me that I was lying and these could pretty much be falsified.”

Mohanad Elshieky
✔
@MohanadElshieky
This morning, ICE agents got on my Greyhound bus that was headed from Spokane to Portland. They walked around before they asked me and few others to step outside and took my documents and interrogated me for around 20 mins then claimed my papers were fake and that I’m “illegal”.

104K
5:08 PM - Jan 27, 2019

Link to tweet

Customs and Border Protection officials have said the agency had been doing such “routine” checks for several years, but civil rights advocates have described the searches as uncommon. A request for comment to CBP on the Spokane incident was not immediately answered.

At the Spokane bus station where Elshieky was asked to get off his Portland-bound bus, officials have described multiple instances in which Border Patrol agents checked passenger identification. A City Council member two years ago said he learned Border Patrol conducts routine bus checks “a couple of times a day.”

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2019/01/28/comedian-says-border-patrol-agents-pulled-him-off-greyhound-bus-check-his-status-then-told-him-his-papers-were-fake/