This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Bob Garfield. You regular listeners know that

freedom of information, a particular passion of ours, has lately become an obsession, and it's

fixated on the veil of secrecy that shrouds customs and border protection, the huge police force

guarding our borders.

We know we have fewer rights at the borders, but that's all we know.

We don't know what rights we retain or how they're attenuated by CBP policies under the

aegis of the Department of Homeland Security because we don't have access to that policy.

All we have are countless stories, countless because we don't have access to that policy. All we have are countless

stories, countless because we can't get the data, of dehumanizing detentions and

intrusions at the border that would seem to be unconstitutional anywhere else.

So we're devoting this hour to the Merck at the border, how we can penetrate it, and why we

ought to try. And since we don't have and can't get hard numbers, we'll use stories.

The first, the one that started us on this quest, you may have heard before. It's from

OTIM producer Sarah Abdurhaman, who was headed back to New York from her cousin's

wedding near Toronto when she was detained, along with a carload of family and friends,

for six hours, without explanation by U.S. Border Patrol agents at Niagara Falls.

Everyone in the car was a U.S. citizen.

Once we realized we wouldn't be leaving the border facility anytime soon, the giddiness we still had from the wedding weekend quickly disappeared.

Head started to slump between shoulders.

All conversations ceased.

I remember one point trying to fall asleep, but I was just so, so, so, so cold.

I couldn't do it.

...