"I'm sorry about that delousing. Just standard procedure..."

"Mr. Al Capone", as former smugglers of his are purported to have called him, was the don dada of the illicit import/export business.  He had mules running booze 24hrs a day, 7days a week.  My parents, years ago, actually had a cabbie in the Bahamas who used to run for Mr. Al Capone back in the glory days.  The organization of his operation was spectacular, but that was back when coppers relied on hard-nosed detective work to solve capers - not drug sniffing dogs, x-ray machines and metal detectors.

How is it possible, in our day and age of homeland security and multiple security checkpoints, that smuggling still exists? Well, I'm sure it has gotten trickier and most likely much less glamourous.  Drug-running mules swallowing lethal doses inside of balloons a'int your daddy's smugglers.

Sitting on the tarmac in the plane, waiting to take off to Trinidad & Tobago, I was just starting to think that the window seat next to me wouldn't be occupied and I'd be able to move over, when a young guy with no baggage comes bounding down the aisle, looking for his seat. With our knees drawn in and deflated hopes of first class comfort in second class seats, he squeezes by us and throws himself into the window seat.  Jostling in his seat, he leans forward as if he's about to make a stand but then gives up whatever internal battle he was waging and retreats back into his seat with a sulking thump.

On his forearm is a tattoo of two bullets and the word "OUTLAW", which was too simple to be anything but makeshift.

The outlaw and I make smalltalk and I notice right away he's all blood-shot in the eyes.  His voice is shaky and there's obviously something hurting him.

It turns out he had just spent all of his 24hr stay in Canada in a 'cold, cold room' and is now back on the plane on his way to St. Vincent.

According to him, immigration officials believed he had drugs with him and then confiscated his luggage, repeatedly searched and interrogated him and were now deporting him.  With tears in his eyes, he explains in his thick accent how he had worked so hard for so long "barefoot in the field" to afford the flight to see and stay with his uncle in Toronto and now has to go all the way back home, with nothing but the embarrassment of explaining himself - only this time to his parents.  This would be, according to him, his first and last visit to Canada.

I felt bad for the kid.  All stories have holes, some more than others just as all deportations have reasons, some more valid than others.  Nevertheless, I gave him my complimentary blanket as a gesture of good will, knowing very well I could be the last Canadian he'll speak to on Canadian soil.  Feeling my duties as interim ambassador were done, I wrapped it up and let him be.

I suspect he would have been put in jail if he really had smuggled something, but I suppose what I was seeing was years of humiliation and defeat by smugglers on law enforcement and border control finally being answered for by one young, shaken up outlaw.  Those days are gone - the days of smiling through their teeth as the border guards reluctantly allow people into the country who, while not being proven of any wrong doing, are almost guaranteed to commit unconscionable acts of varying legality in their fine country.  Now border guards can clip your ticket upon arrival and have you sent back to whence you came if you even think indecent thoughts involving their soil.

I don't pretend to understand immigration rules & regulations, but I do know that kid was way too shook up and confused to have done what he allegedly did.  Sure, he may have done things far worse to earn the branding on his arm - and the worst may still be to come... but of this charge I call bullshit.  Do I feel safer knowing our government is denying entry to the country based on suspicion alone? Maybe.  Do I feel pessimistic about the future of civil rights in our country? You bet.