Customs and Border Protection held a veteran political adviser for 45 minutes after returning to the U.S. from a vacation. Rick Taylor thought it may have been because of his Obama-Biden T-shirt in his luggage.
Taylor, 71, was returning home from a weeklong vacation in Turks and Caicos with his wife and daughter on June 20 when he was placed in a holding room along with several Latino families at Miami International Airport.
“I know how the system works and have pretty good connections and I was still freaking out,” he told the LA Times. “I could only imagine how I would be feeling if I didn’t understand the language and I didn’t know anyone.”
“I was shaking a bit,” he added to the Westside Current. “And all I could think was, if I’m feeling this—someone who’s been in rooms with mayors and senators—what must the others in that room be going through?”
Taylor has advised several prominent California politicians and is the co-founder of Dakota Communications, a public affairs firm based in Los Angeles. He served as the youngest chief of staff in Los Angeles history under Mayor Tom Bradley.
The advisor and former staffer told the Current that the customs officer “looked at me and said, ‘You’re from California, aren’t you?’”
“I said ‘yes, Los Angeles’. And that’s when he slapped an orange sticker on my passport and told me to follow the green dots,” he added.
He was then led to another screening area, where he said he was one of a few white people in a room with mostly Latino families. He was offered no explanation as to why he was being held.
“It was 90 percent Latino, Spanish-speaking folks,” said Taylor. “Most looked like couples. Everyone seemed nervous. And you don’t know why you’re there. No one tells you a thing.”
“You go through every possibility in your head,” he added. “I thought, ‘Do I have something in my bag?’ And then it hit me—I had packed an Obama-Biden T-shirt.”
“I actually started to panic. I thought, ‘Oh my God, is this going to cause me trouble in this country right now?’” said Taylor.
After waiting for close to an hour, Taylor was told to get his suitcase for inspection.
“It wasn’t with me,” he said. “I started to panic again, trying to figure out where it was.”
It had already been picked up by his wife. It was sent through a scanner, but wasn’t opened.
“They handed it to me and said, ‘You’re good to go,’” Taylor told the Current.
He didn’t ask why he had been stopped.
“Truthfully, I wanted to. But I just told myself, ‘Get out of here. Don’t ask questions. Just go’” he said.
CBP told the Current that travelers may be subjected to secondary screening for “a variety of reasons.”
CBP Public Affairs Specialist Alan Regalado told the LA Times that “If Mr. Taylor feels the need to, he is more than welcome to file a complaint online on our website and someone will reach out to him to try and get to the bottom of things.”
“I kept thinking, if we’re in a country where packing an Obama T-shirt makes you nervous at the border, what kind of America are we living in? This isn’t the America I was raised in,” Taylor told the Current.
“The agents have succeeded in making me reassess travel,” he added to the LA Times. “I would tell others to really think twice about traveling internationally while you have this administration in charge.”
The Independent has contacted CBP for comment.
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