emmillinnee

As long as you share the entire thread with the two successful/easy visits as well as the terrible experience! I want to help as many as possible and give a complete picture. Not just the experiences that went well nor just the hard experiences.

I’m glad it was helpful! I scoured the internet for info about travel while waiting on the visa and wanted to provide the same help others provided to me. I will add that we crossed one more time in February via car from Windsor to Detroit. And it was a very different story. We were there for 6.5 hours and at first they told us we weren’t going to be allowed to enter. Some back story below: my husband was in the US for 87 days from September 2021 to Christmas Day 2021. We left and went to Spain to see his family for the holidays and then flew straight to Toronto to stay there for three months while we continued to wait on his visa to be processed. We told the officers in Toronto about our entire plan, and they were cool with it. But in February my grandmother passed away and the funeral was going to be in Texas. I desperately wanted to go and it just didn’t feel right that my husband not be able to join. We knew he was really close to the 90 day limit so I crossed the border in my car to Detroit the day before we were planning on entering the US and asked the officer (explaining that he had a pending immigration visa). The office said it would be fine, but just in case to call the immigration office in Detroit and ask. I called, the office said it should be fine, but to bring proof of absolutely everything so that there would be no issues. Armed with a million documents printed out, we headed to Detroit from Canada. They were rude from the get go, calling us liars, frauds, that we shouldn’t have been granted the ESTÁ if we answered the questions truthfully, etc. they brought my husband to a cell in a back room and made him remove his shoes, socks and shirt and did a very invasive pat down. Then they made us sit on opposite sides of the room and came back an hour or so and brought my husband to another back room and peppered him with questions about his entire life for an hour and a half. after that they were nicer and started treating us like humans again. And eventually let him pass, stamped his passport for another three month entry, and we were able to attend the funeral. It was terrible, and we swore to never enter again until he had his green card, but he was allowed entry. Just a warning for entering the border via car. The officer did tell us that the worst that could happen is that he was sent back to Canada. And that it shouldn’t affect his immigration case even if he was denied entry. But it was still scary.