You land back home after a vacation, holding trusted traveler status, expecting a routine walk through customs. Then an officer pulls you aside. You're an American citizen. You were born here. Yet suddenly, you're sitting in a windowless room under yellow light, wondering why coming home feels like an interrogation.
That is the reality author and entrepreneur Neal Bakshi faced when returning to the United States from a holiday in Greenland. Despite having Global Entry, Bakshi—an Indian-American citizen—was funneled into secondary screening and hit with the oldest excuse in the book: "random selection."
If you've followed modern border security trends, you know how often that phrase gets thrown around. But for millions of travelers of color, it stops feeling random the tenth time it happens.
The Illusion of Random Selection at US Borders
Bakshi has spoken out publicly about experiencing these so-called random checks since his teenage years. This time, though, the context hit differently. After clearing customs, he was escorted to a large, drab holding area.
He didn't see a cross-section of America in that room. He saw a room filled exclusively with other people of color.
When security protocols rely heavily on broad discretion, human bias inevitably creeps in. Officials wouldn't explain why he was being detained until the very end of the process. Instead, they moved him to a smaller room, demanded exhaustive personal details, and questioned his organizational affiliations. The justification given to him? It was supposedly "for my own safety" given current global tensions.
That explanation stretches credulity. How does detaining a domestic author who just came back from a peaceful trip to Greenland protect anyone? It doesn't. It highlights an underlying assumption of guilt placed on a distinct subset of travelers.
What Global Entry is Supposed to Mean
We pay for programs like Global Entry to streamline travel. We submit our fingerprints, undergo background checks, and fork over application fees so we can bypass the friction of international reentry.
When a trusted traveler status gets overridden on a whim without a clear operational reason, the system breaks down. It devalues the very programs the government implemented to manage crowds efficiently. If trusted traveler credentials can be discarded arbitrarily based on appearance or vague risk profiles, travelers lose faith in the process entirely.
Worse yet is the psychological toll. The environment matters. Bakshi described ripped bench cushions and a bathroom without a working lock. Details like that turn a routine administrative check into an intimidating, degrading ordeal. It sends a clear, unspoken message: your passport might say you belong here, but we decide when you're welcome.
The Broader Culture of Border Enforcement
The situation didn't happen in a vacuum. Under the administration of Donald Trump, immigration enforcement and border scrutiny have ramped up aggressively. While national security remains a priority, heavy-handed tactics often cast too wide a net.
You can see this fallout in how vulnerable travelers are treated. As Bakshi prepared to leave, he overheard an officer barking at an elderly Hispanic woman, telling her to sit down and think about "what lie she would tell him next". That kind of casual cruelty has no place in professional law enforcement. It exposes an institutional culture where travelers are treated as hostile actors from the second they step off a plane.
Border agents have a tough job. Keeping illicit goods and dangerous actors out of the country requires vigilance. But turning re-entry into an exercise of arbitrary profiling alienates the very citizens the state is sworn to protect.
When citizens start dreading coming home more than they enjoy their time away, something is fundamentally broken. Accountability at ports of entry needs to catch up to the reality on the ground. Until transparency replaces unchecked discretion, stories like Bakshi's will keep repeating.
