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  Canadian in passport fiasco (INS Deports Canadian Citizen Back to ... India?)
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Last EditedServo  Feb 28, 2003 09:03pm
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News DateSaturday, March 1, 2003 03:03:16 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionCanadian in passport fiasco
Humiliated by immigration staff


JIM RANKIN
STAFF REPORTER

A Toronto woman coming home from India says she was pulled aside at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, accused of using a fake Canadian passport, denied consular assistance and threatened with jail.

In tears and desperate, Berna Cruz says she told U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) officers she didn't want to go to jail. She told them she had to get home to her two children and was expected to be at work the next day at a branch of a major Toronto bank where she works as a loan officer.

Instead of jailing her on Jan. 27, an INS officer cut the front page of Cruz's passport and filled each page with "expedited removal" stamps, rendering it useless.

She was photographed, fingerprinted, barred from re-entering the U.S. for five years and immediately "removed."

Not to Toronto, but to India, where she had just spent several weeks visiting her parents.
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