Vermonters take border diplomacy into their own hands

After U.S. border agents turned away a Canadian woman who says she hoped to shop in Burlington for toys for her 5-year-old son, several Vermonters took to the road.

Fadwa Alaoui, of Brossard, Quebec, was turned away at the Highgate border crossing Feb. 4 after four hours of questioning.

A week later, Rebecca Starks and her husband, Andy Solomon, of Richmond, drove up from Vermont to visit Alaoui and her family, bringing toys and some neighborly sentiment. They weren’t the only ones, though.

“Neighbors look after each other, and I really did feel like I treated my neighbor badly,” Solomon said. “I felt like there was maybe something we could do right here, that was a little different than trying to effect change in Washington.”

“A lot of people feel really scared right now because of policies our government is promoting,” he added. “So it’s important to support people and to let them know that not all Americans support these policies.”

Solomon and Starks traveled Saturday to Brossard, near Montreal.

They wanted to visit the Alaouis and drop off some gifts, Starks said, but the two Vermonters weren’t expecting to stay long.

“I felt a little nervous … and I felt a little intrusive, going to someone’s home,” Starks said. But the Alaouis welcomed Solomon and Starks into their home, where they noticed an enormous spread had been laid out on the table in anticipation of their arrival.

“It reminded me of times when we traveled in other countries and were welcomed in,” Starks said.

Then, shortly before Solomon and Starks sat down for a dinner of couscous, chicken and vegetables, more visitors from Vermont arrived.

Kate McDowell and Dave Rider, of Burlington, had also seen news coverage of Alaoui’s rejection at the border. They were already planning a trip to Montreal that weekend, so they’d written ahead of time, asking to drop by to deliver presents to 5-year-old Youssef, who had recently completed chemotherapy.

“We had no idea that the Alaouis were going to offer us a meal … and really our thought was, we didn’t want to impose,” Kate McDowell said. But when they arrived, the Canadians “were lovely and welcoming.”

“They’re two working parents. They’re connected to their community. They’re chatty, gregarious, regular people, and their house looked a little different than ours — they had different furniture — but other than that they’re regular folks,” she said.

After the McDowells arrived, the three families sat down for an enormous meal and discussed the events of the day, she said.

“They were really gracious, and grateful for the support,” Kate McDowell said. “There was not the least bit of rancor or hostility aimed at Americans at all. They both made clear that her experience at the border was not emblematic of her experience with America or Americans at all.”

In fact, Alaoui’s parents are American citizens who live in Chicago, Alaoui said in an interview Tuesday.

After being denied entry at the Vermont border, Alaoui said she’s worried she’ll be unable to visit her parents.

They’re from Morocco, like Alaoui and her husband, but they’ve all been living in North America for decades.

Morocco was — according to some accounts — the first nation to recognize the United States as a sovereign country, in 1777, and the Treaty of Peace and Friendship negotiated between the countries in 1787 remains the longest-standing continuous treaty relationship in U.S. history. Morocco to this day offers Americans visa-free travel into the country.

Knowing this, Alaoui said, she was surprised at the border agents’ tone and behavior when they detained her and her cousin.

“I didn’t understand why he asked me all those questions,” Alaoui said. “It was tough questions. I didn’t expect from them that type of questions.”

She and her husband both travel frequently, Alaoui said, and this is the first time she’s been turned back at a country’s border. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks she was briefly detained while trying to enter the United States, Alaoui said, but border agents let her in then.

“What happened last week was different,” she said. “They told me, ‘You’re not entering today.’”

Border agents questioned her about Morocco, asked how often she goes to her mosque and inquired about her upbringing, Alaoui said.

When she asked why she’d been denied entry, border agents told her it was because of videos of prayer, and other information pertaining to Islam, on her phone and on her cousin’s phone, Alaoui said.

These were normal exchanges between friends who share a religion, she said. “It was nothing offensive, nothing radical, nothing violent.”

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said agents do not discriminate against anyone on account of their religion and that it is counter to his agency’s charge to refuse entry to the country on that basis.

President Donald Trump’s executive order banning most citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries has raised many questions.

“Nothing’s changed,” said Dave Long, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office in Buffalo, New York.

“Muslims are not banned,” he said. “It’s 100 percent against our policy to discriminate” on that basis.

Some see disturbing pattern

Nevertheless, religious discrimination at the border appears to happen, said James Lyall, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont.

“Religious discrimination is wrong and unlawful in any context,” Lyall said. “That said, it’s been the case for a long time that Customs and Border Patrol officers are afforded huge amounts of discretion and authority. Not unlimited authority, but it’s so broad, and with so little oversight and transparency that it’s difficult to discern when an action is for discriminatory purposes or on the whim of a given agent.”

“It’s a long-standing problem with CBP,” he said. “They’re a notoriously opaque, nontransparent, unaccountable agency.”

The ACLU has fielded numerous complaints in recent weeks relating to Muslims being denied entry into the United States, Lyall said, and the proximity of those complaints to Trump’s executive order has raised suspicion among civil rights activists.

But legal recourse is difficult without CBP’s cooperation, Lyall said.

“It would be relatively easy for them to discriminate and deny it, and continue on about their business without looking back, and that’s essentially what this agency’s done in a number of instances,” Lyall said, adding that CBP agents at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere have defied a court ruling blocking Trump’s order. “At this point, there’s been so much authority ceded to CBP that it’s essentially a political question.”

The incident raises other political questions, said Canadian Member of Parliament Alexandra Mendès, who represents the Brossard area.

Montreal college student Yassine Aber, whose parents moved to Canada from Morocco decades ago, was also denied entry to the United States this month, at the Derby Line station. Mendès said the similarity looks worrying.

“Of course, every sovereign state has the right to refuse entry to their borders,” Mendès said. “But it seems suspicious that these families … were all of Moroccan origin and were suddenly stuck at the Canadian border and not permitted to enter.”

“It doesn’t bode very well to the continuing relationship of trust the two countries have maintained at the border for decades if not centuries,” she added.

“These are not situations that in any way justify us starting to retaliate” against the United States, but they are worrying, Mendès said, and demand diplomatic efforts between the countries to come to a resolution.

Mendès said the Canadian minister of public safety has been made aware of the incidents, “and he is definitely taking this case very seriously.”

Mendès said the Alaouis are well-known, well-integrated members of their community whom she will visit Friday. Fadwa Alaoui’s husband, Hamid, coaches soccer to the son of one of Mendès’ close friends, she said.

“I don’t know if they’ll let us in”

Closer to home, a Montpelier city official sought to help, too, and while he didn’t make the trek to Montreal, he promised to meet Fadwa Alaoui at the border if it might help.

“When I read the news, I was frustrated, furious, depressed and feeling very powerless about it,” said City Clerk John Odum. “I decided, ‘I’m going to invite her down’ … (and) say, ‘I’ll buy you and your family lunch, and show you around Montpelier.’”

Odum emailed the Alaouis and invited them to town but said he’s not expecting them to take him up on the offer soon.

“Honestly, what an unpleasant, humiliating, scary experience for her, especially after, (for) the last 20 years … coming down here without issues,” Odum said. “I wouldn’t expect her to be eager to put herself through that again.”

But if she does, Odum said, he’d like to try to help. He offered her an invitation to return to the country and said he’d show up at the border “to maybe make it harder to pull the same nonsense.”

“I have no pretense of imagining I’d have any special influence at all … but I hope my presence may make it a little more awkward to turn her away,” he said in an interview. “That may or may not be true. Maybe if she’s a guest of an elected official, that’ll make a difference. Maybe it doesn’t. That’s all I’ve got.”

Fadwa Alaoui said she’s not likely to make the attempt anytime soon.

The Alaouis have been planning a three-day vacation to Jay Peak, she said.

“Now, I don’t know if they’ll let us in,” she said, “and I don’t want my kid to be treated with discrimination just because he’s a Muslim. It’s really offensive and really intimidating.”

Her son, she said, wonders whether he’ll be able to see his grandfather again. For now, the Alaouis won’t be visiting Burlington or Chicago.

“I won’t take a chance to do it now,” she said. “I want answers first, to why we were treated like that. Nobody deserves to be treated like that.”

Correction: The last name of Dave Rider has been corrected. It is not McDowell. He is married to Kate McDowell. 

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