Borders

Border Cops Detained Me for Hours Without Explanation. They Won't Tell Me Why.

CBP claims dictatorial powers over Americans coming home. A big part of that is hiding information.

Matthew Petti | 8.20.2026 3:03 PM

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(Matthew Petti)

Around the fourth hour of my detention at the airport, I decided to ask for a lawyer. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent at the front desk refused. I told him that he can't indefinitely hold an American citizen. "It's not indefinite," he replied. "We'll let you know."

That little exchange captures the absolute power that CBP claims over travelers, including Americans, going far beyond any domestic law enforcement interrogation. You don't have a right to contact a lawyer. Neither do you have a right to know why you're being detained or what will happen next. It's not "indefinite" detention; they just won't tell you what the "definite" part is. Crossing the U.S. border is the closest most Americans will come to experiencing life under the foreign dictatorships I report on.

I am not the only American journalist or researcher to be held up at the border. Nor was my experience particularly bad. I got out in four hours with all of my possessions intact. But I decided to do something that most others don't: I reached out to CBP and asked why they did what they did to me. And I asked them about an earlier interrogation, during the Biden administration, which in hindsight seemed inappropriate.

At first, CBP's media office was quite helpful. The first spokesperson I spoke to promised to pull up the notes from my two interrogations, and pointed me to the hotline for travelers who have had excessive "difficulties during travel screening." As days turned to a week and I was passed between different CBP staff, it became clear that I wasn't getting a straight answer. One spokesperson apologized for being "distracted" with more urgent stories. Another was on leave for several days. Et cetera.

It was clear that CBP had the information. One of the spokespeople actually corrected me on the date of my first interrogation—May 16, 2023—so they clearly had looked over my file. But I wasn't getting anything other than generic, anonymous answers: "CBP officers have the authority to ask a wide range of questions, including about travel locations and contacts there. Officers may also ask questions out of curiosity about travel location or your work in media."

The first time I wound up in an interrogation room was in May 2023, flying into John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York from a Fulbright study abroad in Jordan. As I wrote at the time, the process was quick and professional. But in hindsight, parts of it were disturbing. The agents wanted to know if I "have any family in any of those countries"........

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