After the crash in San Francisco today, lots of people are taken to hospitals, presumably without clearing immigration… most probably left their passports on the aircraft. So does CBP now go around to the local hospitals to try and process these people into the country?
A rare event certainly, but does the CBP have a plan for this situation?
Surely people are taken to hospitals without worrying about immigration procedures.
This is interesting. I’ve been wondering the same thing ever since the crash. In video of crash survivors inside the airport I noticed around their necks some were wearing some sort of card/pass with a lot of different stuff printed on it. Maybe that’s some kind of customs thing.
A lot was made of the tight security around the victims of the crash when they were “sequestered” in the Reflection Room of SFO. In large part I think this was to shield them from the press. But all those cops nearby would also be useful to keep an eye on the passengers until they could clear customs.
I imagine the badly hurt people taken to hospitals aren’t a big concern–they’re not going anywhere. I would guess the barely injured folks who were nonetheless transported to a hospital might be the trickiest since they could potentially just wander off after treatment. Maybe those folks actually had to clear some sort of improvised “on the spot” customs before they could go to a hospital.
There have been other accidents like this where people have been able to just wander off into a town. This one they were more or less “trapped” on the airport property.
Still, an interesting situation.
There was a funny story I was told about an F-105 Thunderchief that crashed into a house in Wichita many years back (nobody was home at the time). They were afraid that the pilot had perished in the crash, until the highway patrol found him hitchhiking on the side of the road. Evidently he ejected and landed in a cornfield somewhere, where he got lost for a few hours until he could find his way out. Bit of an aside though.
Back on topic, I imagine the hospital would just set up a quarantine area for the passengers being brought in. Keep them separated from the rest of the hospital just as if there was some kind of outbreak, and then the Customs folks could come and process them in a controlled environment as soon as they were in a condition to do so (Obviously not going to be asking someone if they have anything to declare while the guy is getting worked on by the ER docs)
Hell of a way to welcome someone to the USA, huh?
Why would the hospital do that? It sounds very resource-intensive for something that, unlike an outbreak, doesn’t actually mean anything to hospital operations.
My WAG is the OP has uncovered a customs security hole. Next time you want to enter the country without proper papers, just engineer a decent crash and plan to get injured. But just a little.
IAAARFF (airport firefighter).
Although not the exact circumstance of a crash, I have responded to two close types of incidents where Customs gets involved.
The first have been patients with medical problems while standing in line checking through Customs, one in cardiac arrest. The CBP folks rush them to the front of the line and they are not transported until they pass through the red tape - including the one person in cardiac arrest. It only takes seconds for Customs to do whatever it is they do, and all patients were on their way.
The second was some type of Canadian naval sailor who was airlifted to shore for a medical emergency. Customs met us on the ramp and processed him while we moved him to the rescue. Again, very quick, but no non-Americans get out of the airport until CBP says so.
I am thinking more like the Air France runway overrun in Toronto… the flight from France ended up on a highway and lots of people were picked up by people just driving by. It was in Canada, but the same thought applies.
Thats a bit of a different circumstance. Here you had Ambulances taking people direct from the runway to Hospitals. Also, quite a few of those people must have left their passports on the plane, instructions when evacuating are to leave cabin baggage behind. Unless you have your passport in a money belt or a jacket pocket its very likely you would end up without a passport.
In short I bet some of the injured were taken direct to hospital and then processed by customs at hospital.
Well, my thinking was that they would do it to ensure nobody wanders off unaccounted for. It wouldn’t need to be the full-up scrub-before-entering hazmat kind of quarantine, just enough to control access in and out of an area, which would only really require a few orderlies posted as guards.
As far as how to deal with folks who left their passports and stuff on the plane, that’s what embassies and consulates are for. Get whatever identification you can for the passenger, check it against the flight’s passenger manifest, and contact their nation’s diplomatic folks to verify their nationality. I assume, anyways. I’ve never had to do any of that.
The interesting part would be if some of them had their passports in carry-on luggage and couldn’t get to it when evacuating the plane.
Well yeah, that’s basically the crux of the entire discussion. 
Why would the hospital do that? What does it matter to the hospital if a person walks out into America without the proper stamp?
It tends to piss off the authorities?
Why is that the hospital’s problem? They care about patients receiving appropriate medical care, so they’re more interested in people not deciding to leave the hospital before it’s prudent for medical reasons.
From what I’ve seen in my experience working in hospitals, patients who come in from jails have officers from the jail escorting them. If Customs thinks that these travelers pose that much of a threat prior to screening, perhaps they should be the ones to deal with the situation.
They probably do. Send two cbp officers to the hospital. Have one stand guard at the ward entrance and have one process people one by one at bed side when possible. Easy.
It’s not like it’s unprecedented. International flights with medical emergencies land all the time and those people have to be taken directly to the hospital. Customs can deal with them when later when it is convenient to do so.
I see several issues -
You want to match the people against the flight manifest to see that everyone is accounted for, and stats like how many dead, injured, who, how bad… Also allows you to answer queries from concerened friends and family.
You want to be sure that all the people who are there match the manifest for customs purposes. Whether they have their passport with them or not, I assume they presented one when boarding. Do they record details like passport number at boarding? Certainly name, birthdate, and birth city help them match people with the no-fly list; altough based on stories, it seems pretty incoherent, with name being the only matching piece usually. (Duh. The one thing people change or fake the most.)
I would have to guess there’s a team that deals with these situations - I’m sure every question or scenario you’re tinking of, someone has brainstormed. Simpler to round up whomeever and take care of all the identification formalities once, rather than having teh airline, the FAA, customs, etc. all running around uncoordinated.
Why are the Asiana 214 patients at this hypothetical hospital all together in one ward?
And hospitals treat people who are in the country without having completed all the necessary procedures all the time. Sometimes people who willfully evaded inspection, not just people who weren’t able to do it because they were injured in a serious crash before getting to the inspection area. They don’t have illegals wards with customs officers stationed at the door to keep them from escaping.