US immigration took ‘revenge’ on cruisers with seven-hour delay
Some 2000 cruise passengers, many elderly, were forced to wait seven hours for immigration checks at a port stop in Los Angeles despite already having multiple-entry permission.
Holidaymakers on P&O Arcadia’s £10,000 two-and-a half-month Alaska Adventure trip had stopped nine times already on US soil by the time they arrived in LA on May 26 so expected little disruption from American officials.
Port of Los Angeles offers a welcome ?
But a chance remark from one of the passengers criticising the fact that the check was taking a long time turned the routine operation into a seven-hour ordeal as officers, according to cruisers quoted in the Daily Telegraph, took revenge by insisting on full biometric testing.
All 2000 passengers were fingerprinted on both hands and retina scans were taken plus passports were scrutinised heavily and each passengers questioned in detail.
On top of all this, the immigration computer system then failed, lengthening the drama further.
The Telegraph reports that they were "herded like animals", having to stand in 80F heat with no access to the toilets and no water.
The paper underlines that passengers blamed US immigration for this, not P&O. The operator was forced to extend the LA stay by a day and cancel a stop in Honduras.
A P&O spokesperson told the Telegraph: "The delay in immigration procedures was largely to blame on issues with the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) computer systems, not aided by the verbal approach that a minority of our passengers, clearly frustrated by this delay, took with the local immigration officers.
“The US has a record for the most stringent and thorough security and entry requirements in the world, and they felt the need to enhance their security checks further, which they have the power to do."
Dinah
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