> How is attending a protest a potential violation of customs regulations?
FTFA: “Protesting isn’t a listed or ‘valid’ reason for having Global Entry revoked, but being arrested at a protest is. Impeding or interfering with the agency is. And being investigated is.”
Global Entry absolutely is a completely voluntary social credit system? It’s an optional thing you literally subscribe to that says “I’m squeaky clean so I can skip the investigation line.”
The argument, if there is one, would probably be that following ICE was a violation of an immigration procedure (note that the person who had their GE revoked doesn’t claim they attended a protest, but rather that they were following ICE and got their picture taken). Given what I’ve seen of GE revocations historically, though, it’s equally likely to have been something like “you lived with a felon” or “unpaid traffic ticket became a warrant” or “family member was accused but never convicted of an obscure crime.”
There’s always been a pretty clear mantra that GE is a privilege not a right and that it’s always been an arbitrary and capricious system.
In some ways I think maintaining GE is probably as hard or harder than maintaining a low level (ie Secret) security clearance; it seems to be based on similar databases and discretion with less transparency, human touch, or opportunity to appeal.
> How is attending a protest a potential violation of customs regulations?
FTFA: “Protesting isn’t a listed or ‘valid’ reason for having Global Entry revoked, but being arrested at a protest is. Impeding or interfering with the agency is. And being investigated is.”
Looks like this is a social credit system.
Global Entry absolutely is a completely voluntary social credit system? It’s an optional thing you literally subscribe to that says “I’m squeaky clean so I can skip the investigation line.”
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> Looks like this is a social credit system
To the extent it’s a government program with any discretion, yes. In every other respect, no.
The argument, if there is one, would probably be that following ICE was a violation of an immigration procedure (note that the person who had their GE revoked doesn’t claim they attended a protest, but rather that they were following ICE and got their picture taken). Given what I’ve seen of GE revocations historically, though, it’s equally likely to have been something like “you lived with a felon” or “unpaid traffic ticket became a warrant” or “family member was accused but never convicted of an obscure crime.”
There’s always been a pretty clear mantra that GE is a privilege not a right and that it’s always been an arbitrary and capricious system.
In some ways I think maintaining GE is probably as hard or harder than maintaining a low level (ie Secret) security clearance; it seems to be based on similar databases and discretion with less transparency, human touch, or opportunity to appeal.
They are at least (according to the 9th circuit) supposed to disclose why the GE was revoked though: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2024/05/22/2...