Border Patrol Officer at an Amtrak station.
Credit: Brendan Smialowski

Far from the border, passengers aboard Amtrak trains are now being asked for their status—and Amtrak is not saying whether a rider can be ejected for failure to produce papers.

Corey El was on an Amtrak train from Penn Station to Niagara Falls last Thursday when he says a Border Patrol officer approached his seat.

“He asked me, ‘Are you an American citizen?’” he said. “I scoffed at him and said, ‘Yeah.’”

El quickly got out his phone and took a video of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers questioning another Amtrak customer, which has since gone viral, receiving over 6,800 retweets.

The train was stopped in Syracuse, about 160 miles away from El’s destination, for about 20 minutes, he said. El remembers the officers asking two other riders for their citizenship status, and none of them were white. One passenger, who he said was “possibly Middle Eastern,” produced a burgundy passport during questioning.

“I originally wanted to tell him off […]