By Katherine LaGrave
Here at the Traveler office, most of us have joined the Global Entry club, perks of which include making it past customs and immigration with a quick passport and fingerprint scan and getting out to the taxi stand before many of our fellow plane passengers have even gotten to customs and immigration. It's fast, it works, and it's well worth the $100 fee, which covers you for five years. We're far from the only ones to catch on: the program has 4.7 million members and “thousands of additional travelers applying for membership each day,” according to a November statement from Customs and Border Protection.
Still, not everyone makes the cut—or gets to keep their privileges. This week, a document was made public showing Global Entry revocations and reinstatements from November 2016 to June 2017, and while most of the reasons people had Global Entry taken away are no laughing matter (think recent arrests and criminal history) others are pretty hilarious. On November 11, for example, a flier was issued a $500 penalty for failing to declare two pomelo fruits; and the next month, "Applicant an American Airlines crewmember failed to declare 5 prohibited passion fruit he had in his bag that he brought from Colombia."
Undeclared meat also seems to trip a lot of people up: in February 2017, a flier failed to "declare a roll of pork" and a "roll of pork in rice," and in March, it was a similar story: "Failure to maintain the high standards of the trusted traveler program. To wit: Two packages of pork pepperoni was discovered after a forced amended declaration." Other what-were-you-thinking reasons that Global Entry was revoked: someone was found with "marijuana-infused candy" and another person verbally abused an officer. Our personal favorite, however, may be the person who actually didn't even want Global Entry in the first place—the entry reads "Filed by accident. Member wants to reapply for Nexus instead."
Denied Global Entry, or had it revoked? Hey, there's always Mobile Passport.
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