I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

For context, a Canadian woman recently tried to enter into the USA from Mexico and get TN-1 status. Instead of refusing her entry, officials detained her and she's been stuck for 10 days waiting for deportation.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canadian-woma...

It's unclear to me how big of a risk this actually is for the average "Canadian goes to the USA" story because of her specific factual scenario. Presumably I don't want to enter from Mexico, but is it advisable to take flights from a TSA preclearance airport in Canada so I'm not actually in the USA if the classification is denied?

I was on a big road trip across the country visiting national parks. I went to Organ Pipe Nat. Monument in Arizona which literally touches the Mexican border.

On my way there I drove through a border patrol checkpoint 10 miles north of the border inside the US. They don't check southbound traffic, only northbound. I never entered Mexico. On the way back I had to stop at that border patrol checkpoint. The border patrol agent was basically yelling at me for my passport. I told him I didn't have it with me. He yelled to see my driver's license. I gave it to him and he yelled at me "Why do you have a North Carolina driver's license?" I replied that is where I live and that is my home address on the license. He then screamed at me "Don't you know this is a prime drug running area?!" I told him "I have no idea and I'm not interested in drugs. There is a national park area 5 miles away, don't you get a lot of tourists here going to see that?"

I then noticed in my rear view and side mirrors that another agent was going around my car with a dog sniffing around. After about 2 minutes I saw the dog agent give a thumbs up and the rude agent said "Okay, you can go but you should carry your passport"

I had less rude experiences in Texas and California but still overly suspicious border patrol agents. One guy asked me what all the stuff was in my car. I actually offered him granola bars and soda cans and then showed him landscape pictures on my cameras. He realized that I was really a tourist and not into drugs or helping immigrants cross.

Funny, since half of U.S. citizens don't have a passport.

EU citizens don't need a passport to travel across the EU (even outside the Schengen area, where you have to go through a border check), they just need an identity card.

(most) EU citizens could also travel to Turkey with their identity card.

EU citizens could travel to the UK with their identity card, for a few years after Brexit, as long as they got UK (pre-)settled status.

Russian citizens can travel to Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan without their international passport. They instead have an "internal" passport (meant to be used like an identity card, and for travel to closed towns inside the country), which is recognised by those other countries.

The same applies in the other direction for citizens of nearby countries travelling to Russia (even in the case of an Abkhazian internal passport. Abkhazia is recognised by only ~6 other UN member states).

I'm not sure in which way a US "passport card" differs from a plastic identity card. But it's notable that a few countries don't have either (UK doesn't... Russia and a few neighbouring countries, as mentioned before, instead have an "internal passport")

Of course, something in common with all the examples above, and with US citizens travelling to Mexico, is that you're travelling to neighbouring countries with friendly relations.