Illegal police questioning and harassment of citizens in the US is not unusual: Here is a summary of my story
Comment published in New York Times blog, in response to opinion essay, by Mike Baker and Caitlin Dickinson, “Iranian-Americans questioned at the border: ‘My kids shouldn’t experience such things’, January 6, 2020, (visible at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/us/border-iranians-washington-patrol.html algo=top_conversion&fellback=false&imp_id=169902169&imp_id=535925493&action=click&module=trending&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer#commentsContainer):
Illegal questioning and harassment of American citizens goes on all the time. We have a floating "state of emergency," with constitutional government only on paper.
I am a writer in the arts whose politics are left. Returning in from France in 2013, I was harassed by an undercover cop (obvious, though behind closed doors, so "deniable"). He spoke of "elimination" as a possibility, but "only as a 'life and death' matter." Another cop suggested, "someone might say" (absurdly) that I am psychotic. They can.
In the hospital, nurses tried to provoke me to say something political; one told me in effect that "our people" (claiming he was Jewish) have always been oppressed, and if we rebel, we only have ourselves to blame. He spoke of "those traitors" the Rosenbergs (executed as spies in 1953).
A social worker on the ward threatened me obliquely with long-term hospitalization as a supposed crazy. It would have been effectively a hospice, where I would be sent to prevent me from writing, associating with people of my choosing, or doing anything else I might like. Let go the next day, I could be sure this was punitive harassment.
A lawyer for an agency that assists hospital patients knew my case when I called. "It is the police who wanted you there. You must not show the doctors any frustration. If you ever talk about it. they will call you paranoid, and keep you a long time."
Funny, I'm not even Black. Is this our America? I'm calling their bluff.