This isnt true in my experience, I was on a watchlist type thing for a few years (dont lose your passport ever if you plan to visit the states :) and every time I got taken to secondary screening but only after a rather lengthy set of questions at the first screen, I think even once I interrupted them to ask just to send me to the secondary one.

It was pretty fustrating to have to wait sometimes up to hours (Dallas airport sucks) to know that I was going to get sent to another screen and wait anywhere between 15 minutes and 3 hours to get out, the people were also almost always overly aggressive.