Author and entrepreneur Neal Bakshi, an American citizen of Indian origin, has claimed that he was detained while re-entering the United States after a holiday. In a video shared on Instagram three days ago, Bakshi said that border police pulled him aside for questioning after he landed in the US.
“I'm a US citizen, and I was detained re-entering my own country from vacation,” Bakshi, author and spiritual life coach, said.
‘Randomly selected’
Bakshi was told that he was “randomly selected” for questioning — a claim he dismissed as unlikely in his video.
The Indian-origin man said that he had been facing “random” selections since he was a teenager, but this one felt different.
“After landing from Greenland with Global Entry, a border officer said that I was randomly selected. After being ‘randomly selected’ since my teenage years, this felt drastically different,” he said.
(Also read: Indian woman detained for 8 hours at US airport: ‘Checked by male officer, stripped’)
Neal Bakshi, who is the founder of Awaken Mind Sciences, said that border police agents refused to tell him why he was being detained despite being a US citizen. Instead, he was taken to a large waiting area filled with “people of colour”.
{{/usCountry}}Neal Bakshi, who is the founder of Awaken Mind Sciences, said that border police agents refused to tell him why he was being detained despite being a US citizen. Instead, he was taken to a large waiting area filled with “people of colour”.
{{/usCountry}}“The agents would not reveal to me why I was being taken to the back for processing until the very end of the encounter. They took me to a large waiting area where other people—only of colour—were waiting to be processed,” he said, implying that his skin colour led to his detention.
Bakshi is the son of Indian immigrants who moved to the US decades ago. He was born and raised in the US and is an American citizen.
“Assumption of guilt”
Speaking about his experience of being detained, Bakshi said that he was interrogated and questioned at length. He claimed that people of colour were targetted for questioning by US agents.
“In a smaller room, I was asked for every piece of personal information, interrogated about my affiliations to certain groups, and ultimately told that this was ‘for my own safety’ given everything that was happening in the news with war,” he revealed.
“While I'm sure some nefarious people are stopped with these tactics, it's hard to dismiss the assumption of guilt placed on a clear subset of the population,” Bakshi added.
Neal Bakshi was eventually released and allowed to leave. As his release was being processed, he claims he heard an American officer tell an elderly Hispanic woman: “Sit down and think about what lie you want to tell me next” — further confirming his assumption that specific demographics were targetted for questioning.
The incident comes amid an ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration by the Donald Trump-led US government, which has in turn brought several changes to visa processes and tourism in the US.