Winter Quarter at RIT is finally over and I’m on spring break now.  To get back home lately, I’ve been taking the Amtrak. Its a great way to travel if you don’t mind the extended riding time. There’s no baggage checks or pat downs. There are no ridiculous regulations about what you can and cannot carry. However what you will find on the Amtrak are the obnoxious folk that work for the US Customs and Border Protection, particularly Border Patrol security officers.

What a bunch of fucking jerks. They treat people like second class citizens and speak to them like children. They won’t allow them a call unless its at the station once they’ve been detained. You’re detained whether guilty or not by these border agents based on whatever criteria they’d like to detain you on. They don’t stop or ask questions to people who look white. Racial profiling is the rule and its really the only thing they follow.

On my ride down, as I was settling into my seat, a jerk from border patrol was harrassing a hispanic female with her barely year old daughter. There was a language barrier that really ticked this guy off. He began to yell at her as if she were hard of hearing or as if it was going to make her understand english any better. She said her papers were in the mail and that she had made an arrangement with people at the station. I’m not sure what the arrangement was or what papers were filed, but the border patrol weren’t having it. She asked to call her husband who COULD speak english and they told her she couldn’t make a call until they got to the station. She was asked to pick up her “stuff” which included her baby.

I really wanted to get involved, but I didn’t want to be detained. The last thing I want is to have to deal with those pricks. That’s my rant. I’d like to hear your thoughts.