Edit - let me share a small story with you. It is from the times when I was on EAD (about 4,5 years ago). I was returning from India to Chicago. Immigration office told me there will an additional check so they asked me to follow another officer. The area had lot of chairs and TVs. While, I was waiting for my return of my passport, I saw another guy sleeping on 5,6 chairs. A TSA officer came and telling him while shaking his body to try to wake him up - "hey! wake up. You can go home" :-)
P.S - english is my 2nd language so please pardon my grammar.
If anyone reading this is consistently stopped unfairly, or faces extra delays when ticket agents print their boarding card, you should use DHS TRIP (Traveler Redress Inquiry Program)
[1]: http://www.wnyc.org/story/my-detainment-story-or-how-i-learn...
That being said, I cancelled a couple planned trips since January — not going to travel to the US until I have to; I don't want to put up with the hassle.
If there's one thing I've learned from attempting to replicate bugs, it's that if something affects even as much as one in four people, it'll look hunky dory to thrice as many people as it looks awful to.
I'm Canadian. White. Blonde. I'm often mistaken for a soldier. After possibly hundreds of trips in and out of the US spanning four decades, last month the guy at YVR asked me "what religion are you?" That was strange. I didn't have a ready answer and I'm someone who always has a ready answer for boarder guards. I actually said "Well, when my grandfather died we had a ceremony at a church. Is that enough?"
Have you ever been arrested? No. Have you ever been finger printed? Yes. Have you ever been to the middle east? Yes. Are you carrying food? No. What religion are you? .... wtf did that become a thing?
Interesting. I'm a white guy and I've gone through secondary screening (swabs, detailed questions, etc) probably half a dozen times over the past 2-3 years.
And I have a US passport!
My belief is that it's because I had gone through some pretty substantial weight loss in the past, and so my body skin/muscle/fat density is all screwy around the midsection, and thus it sets the machine off.
Most likely because all the aggressors in those incidents see is the traditional dastar.
Remember that one of the more prevalent slurs for men from Muslim cultures is "raghead." If you're already enough of a shit to think that's a legitimate way to treat people, you probably don't care one whit about the cultural specifics of the "rag" in question.
Going through TSA is a very uncomfortable experience.