Sentri Pedestrian Pass

A day in the life of 2 applicants .. or ... Adventures with Homeland Security

December 31, 2004

The last time Hiker1 walked across the border she was handed a flier encouraging her to enroll in the Sentri Pedestrian program. The flier stated that it was a no cost operation and would make crossing the border on foot super simple. The flier also said come to the old border port building between 8 and 3, Mon-Fri.

Being enthusiastic border crossers, I called them and they gave me directions to the old border port building at San Ysidro and off we went this morning to participate in this ingenious operation which will make our country safer. Naturally, the directions they gave me were wrong and we ended up on the wrong side of IS 5. But, being intrepid sophisticated border crossers, we just flagged down a Border Patrol officer in an official jeep and after laughing at us he was kind enough to tell us where to go.

What you have to do is go into the Mexico crossing exit. The officer told us that the agents inside the building would yell at us that we could not come in, but to just tell them we were going to the old border port building. He also said when we got to the old border port building there would be a long line of Mexicans—he said ignore the line and just go in.

So, off we went on foot across the wonderful user friendly pedestrian overcrossing and walked into the exit of the crossing. Sure enough, I got yelled at, but Hiker1 just went on and I said I was with her, so I just followed her and had no problems. We got to the old border port building, (which is the old mission style structure immediately after you cross the yellow line into the USA ) and sure enough, there was an incredibly long line of Mexicans waiting to get in.

(Digression: We found out later that this was a new Homeland Security Procedure where Mexicans who have permits to visit or shop within 25 miles of the border go into the facility to get screened and fingerprinted if they want to go further. We asked "well, if they just cross and say "the heck with you", and continue on into the USA and go a bazillion miles, or if they get approved, and go further, and then don't come back to Mexico, then what? What have you accomplished? And, we got several paragraphs of explanations that made no sense.)

Anyhow, we ignored the dirty looks we got from the Mexicans waiting (they were too polite to yell at us for jumping the line) and went into the building. The first thing that happened was a Homeland Security Official yelled at us and said we had to wait in line. So we explained why we were there and he sent us on into a special dungeon like room with very battered furniture where we filled out forms, got fingerprinted, had our pictures taken and were issued our very own SENTRI PEDESTRIAN cards. Looks just like the one we have for our car pass. So, we asked why could we just not use our car SENTRI pass and once again we got several paragraphs of explanations that made no sense.

Anyways, on the way in to the old border port building we had to pass by massive lines of people going thru the Disneyland ropes to get out of Mexico. We did see the special Sentri Pedestrian lane, and there was no wait there, so we just knew that when we got our very own pedestrian pass it would be duck soup to get out and back into the USA. Then we got the bad news: The Sentri Pedestrian lane is only open from 5:00am to 9:00am and from 3:00pm to 8:00pm Mon to Friday. It was noon, so we were screwed, and had to wait in line to get out. Oh, well, we had a grand time anyway. Just ask Hiker1s.

 

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