SPOKANE, Wash. — A Portland comedian who was interrogated by Border Patrol agents at the Spokane Greyhound Bus station in January said it is not feasible or necessary to carry paperwork that agents asked him to provide.
On Jan. 27, Mohanad Elshieky said the agents stopped him, asked for his papers and said they were fake when he presented his documents.
Elshieky said in a tweet the agents asked him to get off the bus.
According to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson, Elshieky was asked for his documents once he said he was from Libya and the two he showed – his work permit and Oregon driver’s license – were not considered legal for verifying his asylum seeker status.
If Elshieky would have been carrying an I-94 form, which is paperwork showing that a person is in the asylum process, the situation could have been over quicker, according to the spokesperson.
Salon, a news and politics website, published an article about Elshieky's experience on Tuesday, Feb. 19. Author Rachel Leah asked Elshieky what asylum papers look like and if it is feasible to carry them. His response was, “Not really.”
“Asylum approval is like four pages, and then they have a big tarp attached to them. First of all, you can’t carry them in a wallet, for sure, so I had to have them in my backpack all the time. And honestly, what if I lose my backpack? What if anything happens? It was just not feasible at all. It was just a mess,” he told Salon.
Elshieky also added that the Border Patrol's latest website update says you do not have to carry your papers because they are available electronically.
“So they were not even aware of their own laws,” he added.
A page regarding I-94 forms on the U.S. CBP website reads that “those who need to prove their legal-visitor status – to employers, schools/universities or government agencies – can access their CBP arrival/departure record information online.”
According to the website, CBP gathers travelers’ arrival and departure information automatically from their electronic travel records. Because advance information is only transmitted for air and sea travelers, CBP will still issue a paper I-94 form at land border ports of entry.
In the Salon article, Elshieky also claims Border Patrol agents target Greyhound buses because “most of the people who use them are people of color and poor people.”
“They're used to people who don’t speak English that well and are very new to the country. So they can just emotionally terrorize them. Once they had to deal with me, it was like a new case with them. Like, ‘Oh, this guy talks. OK. This is weird,’” Elshieky told Salon.
Elshieky said no one intervened during the incident in Spokane or reacted when he entered the bus.
“No one said anything positive or negative to me,” he added.
Two other people were taken off the bus that same day, according to Elshieky. He added that a third person was taken away who did not speak English well and “wasn’t able to form sentences.”
“People just didn’t care at all. That was honestly why even — I got so many messages of support — and it’s nice and everything but at the same time, I'm like, yeah, you're saying that on social media that if you were there at the bus station you would have done this or that, but I don’t believe it,” he told Salon.
In the article, Elshieky also addresses being a comic in Portland, America’s current political scene and his love for the country.
Elshieky told Salon that “a country is its people.”
“Because what is a country without the people? It’s just a piece of land out of nowhere. It’s not a flag and it’s not the national anthem, it’s not all of that crap,” Elshieky said.
“I guess to me, if I said I don’t like it here anymore, it’s me viewing America as a place that is only white people and it’s only racist people and that’s it, and that erases the fact that there are so many talented people of color. It just erases everything that they do, if I just viewed America from only that one lens,” he said.
“So, I mean, I love it. I love being here because of the lens I choose to view this country through. Just like looking at the good things about it, the people who live in it, who fight the same fight. I’m not a citizen yet, but I feel like this is my country as much as other people's, too,” Elshieky continued.
Elshieky added that his criticism of the U.S. means he loves it because he wants it to be better.
“I love being here and I want this to be a better place for me and for other immigrants and other people of color and everyone else,” Elshieky said.
You can find Elshieky’s full statement to Salon on his Twitter page.
U.S. Border Patrol Special Operations Supervisor Bill Kingsford released a statement Wednesday afternoon.
With regards to the statement that the asylum paperwork is too much to carry, I have attached a copy of the form that would have been received (I-797A), since he has been granted asylum. if you look at the bottom of the page it has a small portion which is the I-94 that would be detached and carried with the person. I’m not sure why he would feel it necessary to carry all the paperwork when all that is needed is the I-94. I can see if our agents stated he needed to carry his paperwork with him as a generic statement, however, if he would have had his I-94 he would have been fine.
The law that states the need to carry the immigration paperwork is 8 USC 1304(e), which states:
“Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d). Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both."
Now with regards to the website showing the I-94 can be located online. As of now, only those arriving via air and sea would fall under this program. Those arriving at a land port of entry would still receive a paper form I-94. However, if you read on the FAQ page, attached, it states that even though the traveler would not receive documentation, they would still receive a stamp (typically placed in a passport) showing date of admission, class of admission, and admitted until date. This would allow us, when conducting an immigration inspection, to be able to locate quickly that the person is in the United States legally.
So if he is saying Border Patrol is saying he did not need to carry the paperwork because it can be accessed electronically, you can see that he would have still needed something to show his status. If he would have had his passport which possibly would have had the stamp, we could have seen that he was legally in the United States. As it was, he only provided an Employment Authorization Document which specifically states on the back, sample attached, is not evidence of U.S. citizenship or permanent residence.
As I have said prior, it is important that those who are here legally carry their documentation showing their immigration status, as required by law, when our agents encounter them. We are not trying to delay a person traveling more than is necessary for us to do our job.
