My wife got pulled aside for additional screening for taking a breast pump on a business trip, until an older female agent told the young woman doing it "It's a breast pump."

> Given the somewhat stark choice, he chose removal of the seton, which was done by a doctor at the airport who claimed never to have come across one before.

The obvious answer is to fly home, not to enter the country, and not to let an untrained and clueless individual remove it. Why didn’t he do that?

> The obvious answer is to fly home, not to enter the country, and not to let an untrained and clueless individual remove it. Why didn’t he do that?

We don't know given the lack of details in OP, but a few possibilities come to mind:

- Time-sensitivity to attend a meeting, deliver knowledge, deliver goods, etc.

- Fleeing country of origin to seek asylum

- Relatively extraordinary expense of plane ticket and lack of means to purchase another

It says he was on vacation visiting as a tourist. Did you read the article?

> It says he was on vacation visiting as a tourist. Did you read the article?

The linked OP which I read is an article summary and that summary does not identify the author as a tourist on vacation.

I do not have access to the full article.

I think that would have counted as a deportation or similar and he would have had worse problems the next time he visited.

That's what I would have done, but I can understand the reticence. Being denied entry -- especially due to security concerns -- can turn into a Big Deal with lots of downstream effects.

Good luck trying to enter the USA again after being denied entry for something like this.

This is a remarkably unempathetic response.

That would at the very least incur costs for new flights. Airlines may charge you for the return, too. It may cause future immigration trouble. Some travel is time sensitive.

After all that, if the trip is more than a couple of days, you have to pay American healthcare rates to get a new one put in so the hole doesn’t close up. That could be $20-30k given it required general anesthesia.

The obvious answer is because he had something extremely urgent to do in the country.

It says he was on vacation visiting as a tourist. Did you read the article?

A 5 min google session could have led to another phone call to an actual professional.

The selection and training of border control weeds out any curiosity or empathy. In practical terms the person wouldn't have been allowed to use their phone, it may even have been confiscated.

Apparently the did, and the doctor had not heard of the procedure before.

...and did not bother to find out whether it was before removing the seton. That's malpractice in my book, though I doubt the victim has standing to sue.

The US has some of the best medical professionals in the world - the TSA intentionally chose to not care about who they called in to assist.