Monday, March 2, 2015

Border Patrol Checking People's Immigration Status at Greyhound Bus Station

Posted By on Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 3:15 PM


A small group of Scholarships A-Z (an advocacy group mostly made up of undocumented students) members headed back to Tucson last night after attending a retreat with the Arizona Dream Act Coalition in Phoenix this weekend.

When they reached the Greyhound Bus Station on Congress Street, they were pretty unhappy to see Border Patrol agents escorted inside the bus by Greyhound staff. According to Francisco Salcido, who was on that bus with Scholarships A-Z, they interrogated four passengers native to Guatemala.

The agents did not bother any one else on the bus.

Apparently, the agents quoted some 1940s law (???) to justify their presence on the bus, which was headed to El Paso, Texas, according to Salcido.

Question: Since when is the Border Patrol allowed to interrogate bus passengers about their immigration status when not in an international border or passing through a BP checkpoint? 

Will this become routine? It is widely known that migrant men, women and children, many recently released from immigration detention, can be found at the Greyhound station, where they hope to take a bus, oftentimes across the country, to reunite with family and/or friends while they wait for their hearings with ICE, etc.

If anyone has more info, please let me know, while I reach out to Greyhound and BP.

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