From CBC News
Canadians With Mental Illnesses Denied U.S. Entry
Data entered into national police database accessible to American authorities: WikiLeaks
by Sarah Bridge September 09, 2011
More than a dozen Canadians have told the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office in Toronto within the past year that they were blocked from entering the United States after their records of mental illness were shared with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Lois Kamenitz, 65, of Toronto contacted the office last fall, after U.S. customs officials at Pearson International Airport prevented her from boarding a flight to Los Angeles on the basis of her suicide attempt four years earlier.
Kamenitz says she was stopped at customs after showing her passport and asked to go to a secondary screening. There, a Customs and Border Protection officer told Kamenitz that he had information that police had attended her home in 2006.
Kamenitz says she asked the officer how he had obtained her medical records.
A document completed by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer says that at a secondary inspection at Pearson airport in Toronto, it was ascertained that Lois Kamenitz had 'attempted suicide in 2006,' and a medical clearance would be required for a further attempt to enter the United States. (Sarah Bridge/CBC)
"That was the only thing I could think of," she says. "But he said, no, he didn’t have my medical records but he did have a contact note from the police that [they] had attended my home."
http://www.cbc.ca/ne...entry-1.1034903
From the Toronto Star Thursday, Nov. 28, 2013
Disabled Woman Denied Entry to U.S. After Agent Cites
Supposedly Private Medical Details
A Toronto woman is shocked after she was denied entry into the U.S. because
she had been hospitalized for clinical depression.
by Valerie Hauch News reporter
Ellen Richardson went to Pearson Airport on Monday full of joy about flying to New York City and from there going on a 10-day Caribbean cruise for which she paid about $6,000. But a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent with the Department of Homeland Security killed that dream when he denied her entry.
"I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression," said Richardson, who is a paraplegic and set up her cruise in collaboration with a March of Dimes group of about 12 others . . .
Richardson said she had no discussion whatsoever with the agent at the airport about her medical history or background. A personal relationship breakup in 2012 caused her clinical depression and hospitalization (there was no police involvement) . . .
http://gta/2013/11/2...l_details.html#
Edited by Luminosity, 01 December 2013 - 05:20 AM.