How much of a sense of humor do US Customs Agents have?

Upvote:3

Most officers will have the usual sense of humor, the normal amount.

But yes, you can get in deep trouble when you make the wrong joke to a customs agent.

As you were home bound and entering your own country, the most trouble you could expect was a very thorough search, down to the body cavities and a lengthened stay in a lock-up till your system has circled so they are sure you did not congest something illegal.

When you make a joke in a foreign country you can add to that, like being blocked from entering the country and getting a ban.

Most of the time they will not go to the excesses, but the officers can initiate things like that, even when they do not have the power to take all actions themselves. And the officers that work in customs do have more powers than many of the others that work in the police force and security.

The actual text of your joke, as you wrote it here, should not be a reason to take very much action, but the wrong officer or an officer in the wrong mood could have started the process and something suspicious, like an insect that left eggs in your belongings or some such, could have made the situation much worse.

Upvote:10

In my experience, any given agent, like any given person, may react with amus*m*nt, annoyance, or indifference, but as long as you retreat quickly and meekly if an agent is annoyed, you'll probably be fine.

Even the same agent might react differently on different days, or at different times on the same day.

Part of the problem is that the agent might think that you are being evasive, or that you are challenging the agent's authority. If your joke included an explicit statement that actually responded meaningfully to the question, it would probably go over a bit better. I'm thinking of something like "[insert joke here], but I have no goods to declare."

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