Routine border check or racial profiling?
Staff Reporter
Milgo Noor had an appointment at 3:30 p.m. this past Sunday to look at bridesmaid dresses in a Buffalo bridal shop. She never arrived.
When the young bride-to-be tried crossing the border with her three bridesmaids – two sisters and a cousin – the women were detained for more than eight hours and two of them were escorted back into Canada in handcuffs.
"I'm not a terrorist. I didn't have grenades strapped on my stomach," Noor told the Star. "I'm just an ordinary citizen going shopping."
Shortly after Noor, 26, showed her citizenship to a U.S. border guard at the Peace Bridge, more than a dozen customs officers "charged" at her vehicle, starting an ordeal that she said stripped her of her dignity.
All four women are Canadian citizens. The family arrived in Alberta from Somalia 17 years ago and Noor has lived in Toronto for the past five years. The women have all crossed the border before without incident. This time they drove a rented vehicle. All the women are practising Muslims, but none wear the hijab.
For three of the eight hours, Noor and her eldest sister Rukia, 32, were held in solitary holding cells. After asking repeatedly why they had been detained, they were laughed at by U.S. border officials. "You have no rights here," they were told. "You came to us."
Their rooms had a chair bolted to the floor, a wall-mounted surveillance camera and an alarm that sounded every 30 minutes. They were searched by border officials wearing gloves, the women said, as well as being fingerprinted and photographed.
"It's one of those bizarre things that you never think is going to happen to you," Noor said.
They were told it was a random inspection, she said.
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