Chronicle
of Higher Education: The US Customs and Border Protection
agency has boosted the manpower it deploys along and behind the
US–Canadian border. The result, as the
Chronicle's Colin Woodard reports, has been an
increase in the number of roving patrols and surprise
checkpoints on buses, trains, and highways. If foreign
professors, postdocs, and students fail to present valid
immigration documents, they risk being fined or detained. But
even when scholars do have the right paperwork, border patrol
agents, who are not necessarily well-versed in the intricacies
of immigration law, have detained scholars anyway. Woodard
cites the case of
A scholar at an undisclosed institution in Rochester [who] was arrested at the airport while on his way to visit his wife, a student at an institution out of state. Both had H1B visas, had applied for permanent residence status, and had permission from Citizenship and Immigration Services to live, work, and travel while their applications were adjudicated, according to their attorney, Mr. Novak. But Customs and Border Protection officers "treated him like a criminal and threw him in the clink. The wife didn't dare come to pay the bond to get him out because they would throw her in jail, too."
