"Badges? We don't need no steenkin' Merit Badges".
Posted on 07/28/2014 3:57:31 AM PDT by markomalley
Does this sound right to you at all? It sounds almost like a parody story, something from The Onion. But… it isn’t.
From Todd Starnes:
Troop leader: Customs and Border agent held Boy Scout at gunpoint
A Boy Scout troop from the nation’s heartland is demanding answers and a U.S. senator is expressing outrage after a group of scouts was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, with one child allegedly held at gunpoint.
Jim Fox, the leader of the Mid-Iowa Boy Scout Troop 111, said the incident occurred earlier this month at a checkpoint along the Alaska – Canada border. The scouts and their leaders were on a 21-day trek from Iowa to Alaska – a trip that had been three years in the planning.
As their vans were moving through a checkpoint into the United States, one of the scouts snapped a photograph. [Imagine that!] Agents stopped the van and ordered all the passengers to get out. They told the underage photographer that he had committed a federal crime. It was unclear which agency with the Department of Homeland Security’s CBP agency was involved in the incident.
“The agent immediately confiscated his camera, informed him he would be arrested, fined possibly $10,000 and ten years in prison,” Fox told Des Moines television station KCCI.
During the search, one of the scouts tried to retrieve a bag from the roof carrier. When he turned around, Fox said an agent had a loaded pistol pointed at the child.
“He heard a snap of the holster, turns around, and here’s this agent, both hands on a loaded pistol, pointing at the young man’s head,” Fox told the television station.
The scoutmaster wrote a detailed account of the incident on his Facebook page. He said he tried to watch the agents search the van but was ordered to return to his vehicle. An agent followed him and told the youngsters “that the next one to leave the van would be handcuffed and detained.”
“The agent in charge informed me of the potential charges against (the) scout and informed me it is a violation of federal law for any American to take a picture of a federal agent or any federal building,” Fox wrote. [HUH? Does anyone know anything about that?]
Fox said he and another member of the troop were interrogated by agents – forced to answer questions about their background.
They also wanted to know why the Boy Scouts were hauling “excessive amounts of lighters, matches and knives,” Fox said. After a lengthy delay, the Scouts were released without any charges being filed. [Why indeed would Boy Scouts heading to Alaska have lighters, matches and knives? It boggles. The next thing you know they will also have tents, rope and back packs. Then? Who knows? Compasses, for God's sake!]
“The boys were unnecessarily frightened and intimidated,” [D'ya THINK?] Fox wrote. “When do we Americans decide enough is enough? The TSA and border guards are a valuable asset to the safety of this country, but to have such Gestapo tactics against a teenage scout is uncalled for.”
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, agrees.
“It’s outrageous that a border patrol agent would point a gun at a boy scout just for taking a picture,” he told the television station. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
The senator’s office said they are looking into the matter.
[...]
This sounds more like a TSA story than a Border Patrol story.
Cross linking some other threads on the topic if anyone is interested in the comments thereon:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3185646/posts
Iowan Boy Scouts Allegedly Harassed by Border Patrol at the Canadian Border into Alaska
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3185297/posts
Troop leader: Customs and Border agent held Boy Scout at gunpoint ^
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3184004/posts
Border official points gun at Boy Scout ^
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3183576/posts
Border official points gun at Boy Scout ^
They tell us that you have nothing to fear of their total surveillance state if you have nothing to hide.
They must have a lot to hide.
Wow. We appear to be closer to a national meltdown than I dared believe. The police-state attitudes are something straight out of the Soviet Union. “Pictures are forbidden, Comrade!”
The police state is here.
30 years ago, I remember laughing at the tyranny of Banana Republics where it was illegal to photograph the guards or buildings. And now it is here.
Tyranny and oppression are here.
"Badges? We don't need no steenkin' Merit Badges".
I was surprised to hear this since initially I thought it was the Canadian customs agents that had done this but then it wasn’t too long ago they were unarmed (I don’t even know if they are armed now) so then having it turn out to be the US Customs gang made more sense if any sense about this incident can be found.
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