Should I bring my Passport while traveling on Amtrak?

[Devil's Advocate]

A few times border agents have acted like they thought I was carrying fresh food, exceeding a duty allowance, or carrying drugs. Bringing several pounds of ground coffee really gets them excited. Most of the time they just waive me through like I'm the one holding them up. Back in the paper document era I sometimes missed a question or skipped a box and that could trigger more questioning. From what I understand the odd questions asked five different ways (or five levels deep) are mostly about watching your physical and mental reaction. They're checking for anything that looks or sounds unnatural, but that's only from their perspective and they rarely have the same perspective as a frequent traveler. They want to find a dangling thread they can pull on to make something important unravel. One thing I've always wondered about was that weird card CBP sometimes give people entering the inspection area to be returned at the end of the inspection. What is the purpose of the card and what happens if you try to refuse it? Sometimes they say it's a training card and other times it's a timing card. It seems like they mainly hand it out near the start of a shift but other than that I'm not sure what it does.

 

[PVD]

Those would most likely be CBP-Customs, not Border Patrol. Different group, different purpose, and many would say different culture and mentality.

 

[joelkfla]

One thing I've always wondered about was that weird card CBP sometimes give people entering the inspection area to be returned at the end of the inspection. What is the purpose of the card and what happens if you try to refuse it? Sometimes they say it's a training card and other times it's a timing card. It seems like they mainly hand it out near the start of a shift but other than that I'm not sure what it does.

It may indeed be a timing card, to check the station's efficiency.

Before everything was done by RFID, Disney used to give random Guests a card to hang around their neck when they entered a queue, with instructions to return it to the cast member working the boarding area. That's how they came up with the estimated wait times for the Tip Boards.

 

[MARC Rider]

While I'm generally uneasy about fully intelligent robots, if there was one profession that would best be turned over to intelligent robot workers, it would be the Border Patrol and the border inspectors, and other law enforcement personnel. They could be programmed go be without prejudices and to do their job consistently, so that wherever you dealt with them, they'd be the same. You wouldn't have to give them "productivity goals" that incentivize them to find things or provoke people so they can be arrested. Furthermore, if you deployed enough of them to ensure that all (or most) lawbreakers were captured, you would end up arresting such a large proportion of the population that it would provide for a real political push for repealing all of the petty laws and prohibitions that do nothing to provide actual order to our society.