In Post 38 USN Bandit sums it up very well.
A foreigner wishing to enter the United States assents to all the rules and laws of this country. There is no requiremnet to “post signs”.
US law enforcement have full authority to searches and seizures for anyone entering the country as a condition to their entry. If you don’t want to comply, turn around.
Millions of people cross the border from Canada every year. In those millions are more than a handful of bad guys - really bad guys. BCE agents are tasked to cathch them before they do harm. And the bad guys don’t look like Muslims with AK-47s over their shoulder and dynamite sticks in their backpacks. They can come in fancy suits and Lexus, or soccer moms in SUVs.
That Canadian with an attitude has just made it harder for other Canadians with no attitude to come to the United States.
Soccer Moms? Really? Send me a picture of a person who looked like a US soccer mom that hijacked an airplane or murdered school children.
Partially true. Those types of inspections are limited to "Customs Officers" which means CBP, ICE and some other specifically trained law enforcement.
Any bad guy, no matter what his trappings, would NOT act like that Canadian guy did. It is the last thing a bad guy would do and those agents knew it. They just felt like hassling those people. Just one explanatory sentence in a reasonable tone from the first agent to the Canadian would have defused the situation entirely.
I’m not letting the Canadian guy off the hook - he’s from Ontario and lots of people there have an attitude like his. They can be a real pain in the a$$. The border agents must know that and not like it. In one respect, this strikes me like the stories of little old ladies getting frisked at the airport while the middle eastern guy gets a smile and a nod. Wrong focus.
A reasonable compromise might have been to just deny them entry because they refused to co-operate and let them go home without all the bullying.
And law enforcement officers with attitudes have just made it much harder for other law enforcement officers without attitudes to get cooperation and convictions from private citizens. I have some potential jury duty coming up later this year. I will certainly be less likely to be trusting of any law enforcement officer making an accusation of "obstruction of justice" or "assault" after hearing the standards used here. This video already has almost 100,000 viewings. The net effect of this incident will be far worse for law enforcement than for Canadians.
US law enforcement have full authority to searches and seizures for anyone entering the country as a condition to their entry
Just because they have that authority does not mean they have to exercise it like complete @$$holes every time they meet with an irate traveler. Part of the trick of detecting threats is being able to use common sense and discretion.
If you work at a border post where hour-long waits in lines of cars to cross the bridge are commonplace, you're gonna inevitably end up dealing with irate travelers. It sucks, and maybe they don't "deserve" to be treated politely, but it's part of the job. If the BP agent can't deal with that, and thinks a frustrated traveler in a minivan on the way to the outlet mall should be given the Osama bin Laden body cavity search treatment, then he doesn't have the temperament for that job. Period.
I've been across the US-Canada border dozens of times at multiple different places ranging from the east coast to the Pacific northwest. There are places where the US side of the border patrol is polite and equipped to deal with irate travelers. It's almost always a hassle at that New York crossing though, which tells me there is something wrong with the way border patrol operates there even though they usually are no problem at the other places.