I'm so pissed off about this on so many levels I can't even comment.

Look at the numbers. From the article:

2000 passengers, 7 hours, 8 Customs officers.

(2000 passengers/8 customs officials)= 250 passengers/official.

(250 passengers/ 7 hours) = about 36 passengers per hour per official.

(60 min/ 36 passengers)= about 1.68 min/passenger, or about 1 min 41 sec.

In other words, on average, each passenger spent less than 2 minutes with customs personnel.*

That's to run full prints, retina scan, and "detailed background questioning," at least partially without computers.

I'm not a fan of Security Theater, but a 2 minute check before entering a foreign country doesn't seem terribly unreasonable. If there's any blame for Customs, it's for not having the manpower available, but that isn't necessarily because of incompetence or power-madness.

Also note some the phrasing:

"Passengers _claim_ that the extra checks were carried out in 'revenge.'"

"_Some are said_ to have passed out in the heat."

"One immigration official _is said_ to have replied: “Do it over the side, we won’t mind.”

(emphases added)

At the very least, this is sloppy journalism-- it sounds like the reporter is simply repeating the claims of frustrated passengers with no attempt to independently verify what happened.

Speedy

*Assuming all 8 officials were working to process them at once. If not, the average time actually spent with an official would be even lower.

"If there's any blame for Customs, it's for not having the manpower available..."

This has become a recurring theme. I know that O'Hare airport has suddenly experienced a huge delays getting people through customs. When it was investigated, it was discovered that INS had redeployed half their staff to border states--without informing anyone. Sounds to me like something is up.

Speedy, you are asuming that only the last 8 people in line spent 7 hours waiting around, how to say that it didnt take 7 hours for the info that it was safe for them to enter the country to come back after the bio metric data was taken.

And really? retina scans? for octegenarians? in town for less thn 12 hours?

Amy: unfortunate, yes. I'll reserve judgment on unreasonable. Here's why:

Assuming the numbers in the article are accurate (2000 passengers, 8 officials, 7 hours), average interaction time between passengers and officials was still under two minutes. The rest was time spent waiting in line.

As for "not a big surprise there was a ship docking that day," no it wasn't. But I don't know the number of ships that docked in LA that day, nor the number of officials available on any given day, nor the number available for any given ship.

So until a follow-up article reports something like "during the 7 hours, there were 50 more Customs officials sitting in the office playing computer Solitaire," calling this the work of "power-mad bullies" is jumping to conclusions.

(Which, I suspect, is exactly what the article is meant for.)

Speedy

Lujlp: you're correct, as to my assumption. My point is that the information needed to make an informed judgment is not in the article.It could've happened exactly the way you suggested. (In my experience, that's not how Customs queues work, but it's possible.)

I'm not trying to defend Customs here-- maybe they really were power-mad bullies when dealing with these British septuagenarians. But _based on this article_, that's not a fair conclusion.

Speedy

I wonder what percentage of illegal aliens and terrorists on our shores came via luxury cruise liner.

Meanwhiles, say each of those 2,000 passengers were allowed to roam Los Angeles, experiencing the restaraunts, shops, and services. That's a half million in tourism revenue if they each spent $250.00, which is not difficult to do on vacation.

Plus now they don't get to go to Roatan, which is beautiful and even more dependant on tourism.

“The US has a record for the most stringent and thorough security and entry requirements in the world, and they felt the need to enhance their security checks further, which they have the power to do.”

Provided you legally pull up to a dock in L.A. Go look at the area between Baja and Brownsville -- how many get through without checks?

The best part of this? The pencil-necked government dick who came up with this idea will get moved out of the basement and upstairs to a cubicle near a window.

Meanwhile, the southern border is wide open and people are pouring through.

Speedy, lets assume the customs agents werent asshole - which is probably the most massive assumption so far - but for the sake of argument lets assume.

Retina scans, why? What possible need does the US government have for 2000 retina scans of british citizens, 95% of which will probably dead within the next three years.

You even been on a cruise? For a one day stop you pull into the harbor around sunrise if your lucky, you get to disembark around 7 or 8, and you have to be back on in time for the ship to pull away from the dock - assuming you acctually got a dock and didnt have to use a ferry - sometime between 6 and 8.

So again, 2000 retina scans, for a less than 12 shoppong trip, of people most likely to be dead before the next winter olympics, who more than likely dont even have retina scan held by the british government for the US government to compare their scans to.

Putting everything else about the article aside for the moment, just think to yourself, why the retina scans, what would the point even be?

Silly Brits. All they had to do was walk north from Mexico.

Speedy, your math is fuzzy. You're saying the average person spent 2 minutes in line. Well there's a problem with averages and this scenario. Think of a bad traffic jam. The 1st few cars might get through fairly quickly, but everyone's time gets compounded to the cars behind them, so there's a great deal of people there for a very long time.

In past years, re-entering the USA from Thailand was a long process, involving people opening up your suitcases and answering questions. That seems to have been much reduced in recent years. Now, no one looks in my suitcase anymore, and they ask one question.

There seems no rhyme or reason to our Homeland Security octopus. Yet we know about 1 million Mexicans enter the USA illegally every year--meaning bona fide terrorists could enter the USA easily, buy automatic weapons at a gun show, and go to town. I suppose they could even walk across from Canada.

Homeland Security has become part of the permanent and fantastically expensive and sacrosanct defense establishment. Good luck taxpayers.

buy automatic weapons at a gun show, and go to town.

BOTU,

I'm going to break my rule to respond to the troll.

You categorically can not buy a fully automatic weapon at a gun show. You can buy semi-automatic weapons. Even the large majority of federally licensed firearms dealers don't carry fully automatic weapons.

The majority of federally licensed firearms dealer will not sell to hinky buyers, especially in border states, unless they are ordered to by the BATF.

Please, have at least a clue of what you are talking about before posting on a subject.

Jim its increadably easy to odiy semi autos to fulls.

I had a drill sergant show me how once. From what I understand its even easier to modify an AK

luj- depends on the age of the gun. Modern AKs made either domestically or specifically for import into the US are supposed to require massive modification to be made fully automatic. Someone without machining and gunsmithing skills and equipment will almost certainly be unable to do it.

And there are no legally available conversion kits to do it either.

Yer, you can break the law and get a full auto weapon, but it is not easy.

Of course, these restrictions wouldn't have come about if not for prohibition, so slap a christian woman to thank her for that.

For those commenters saying that the delay may not have been unreasonable, do note: this was a cruise ship that was stopping as US ports all along the west coast. The passengers already had multi-entry permits, which they had already used at previous ports of call (this was not the first).

They should have simply been waved through "hi, welcome to our city". There is zero excuse for putting them through any routine more rigorous than a passport check.

They should have gone to Mexico first and then they could have walked across the boarder and stayed as long as they wanted.