Department of Fatherland Security

I made a return trip to the UK recently, my route between Quito and Manchester involved flight connections in Miami and New York. Flying via the USA was the cheapest option, but not the simplest. Just to make a flight connection on their soil, you need a visa. On checking in for the return to Quito, I was issued my boarding cards, each had ‘SSSS’ printed on the bottom. This is the code to alert airport staff that I’m to be given extra security checks. Travelling by air in the USA is a hassle as it is. Since 9/11 security has gone through the roof. Many years ago, but post 9/11, while waiting to board a flight in San Francisco I noted that everybody in the queue without a US passport was pulled out and given extra checks. So on this trip, as on that one, I was to be frisked, swabbed and questioned, a lot. To add to the suspicion, I had a sword in my checked baggage. Legal to travel with, but a red rag to already paranoid airport security.

Whether you are covertly singled out for additional checks or not, you can expect to be mildly bullied by little men in uniforms, who can be as surly as they wish. They represent an unpleasant mix of bureaucracy and authoritarianism. One such official that I noted in Miami, had his stamp for approving passports ready on his right hip and on his left hip a pistol. But for him daily work is not just a matter of stamping passports and presumably shooting the odd foreigner. Just to transit at a US airport you have to consent to being photographed and also have your finger prints taken. This is routine. While you are going through this pseudo-arrest procedure, they will bark odd questions or commands at you, and combine it with a surreal politeness: “Sir, did I say that you could move? Well don’t move then, I’m busy at the moment, Sir, I will tell you when I am ready for you to move”. I’ve never seen this arrogance in border guards anywhere else, and I’ve visited about 40 different countries.

On arrival in Quito, I found that in transit one of my bags had been ripped open by US security, this was the one with the sword in it. A small sticker informed me that under US law they have the right to damage bags during inspections. The bag wasn’t locked, it just had zips, but they didn’t use the zips, because under US law they don’t have to. Tossers.

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