Once when returning from Canada ten years ago, the Border Patrol officer was a complete asshole and if he could, I’m sure he would have denied me entrance if he could but after a few minutes of making me wait, he waved me through
The second was COVID related. You must take a PCR test and if you test positive you cannot fly back to the US. I’m sure there are technicalities because there is not the same requirement traveling by other than air so the US gov would say, "We’re not barring entrance to the US; we are barring your access to the plane to bring you to the US. If you can swim across the Atlantic with your passport then you can enter the US.
Both of these incidences started me thinking: if you are a US citizen with a valid passport and assuming you passed the searches, bag check, etc. can Border Patrol prevent your entry into the United States.
IANAL but while I don’t think they can permanently bar you from entering, they could probably bar you for an uncomfortably long time, depending on circumstances. The government can do things at borders that are less constitutionally permissible within our political map boundaries.
There are also private “ambulance” planes that carry Covid+ patients (or other people with contagious diseases or other health issues that preclude them traveling on standard commercial flights).
I believe the answer to the OP is generally “no”, although there are probably cases where you will be arrested at the border for various things.
My understanding is that the answer is a pretty hard no. A US citizen cannot be denied entry into the United States.
You can be detained (perhaps for a long time) to investigate said citizenship, or any other number of customs investigations. You can certainly be prohibited from flying on a plane (for any number of reasons), but that’s not CBP denying entry.
They can, however, insist that you prove your citizenship, and if you do not have acceptable proof, they may bar you on those grounds. I had a guard scare me with that as a teenager (all I had was a driver’s license, high school ID, and various other things at a time when it was perfectly legal and common to fly Canada > USA without a passport).
Reentry into the United States by an American is an absolute right. Oddly, you can commit a crime exercising this right (by crossing at anyplace but a designated crossing point comes to mind), but you cannot be denied reentry.
As I understand, with current passport travel requirements (both land and air) they can deny entry to an American citizen not presenting their American passport. I read once about some fellow born in the USA, who moved to Israel as a baby. He first tried to return to the USA as an adult to attend a business convention, and was denied entry because, due t his place of birth, he was American - and Israeli passport was not acceptable. (He’d never had an American passport, at least as an adult.) This should be a concern to any dual citizen. Not sure how many other countries have this requirement.
I knew a fellow who moved to Canada from Germany as a baby. years ago, Canadians could enter the USA with a driver’s license or similar ID way back when. He never got around to acquiring Canadian citizenship. He was with a bunch of classmates in university when they decided to drive into the states for a shopping/drinking trip. he figured it would be less hassle to lie and say he was Canadian. The US border guards detained him, and his next call was to his parents - “Hey, mom, dad - guess where I am? Frankfurt!” Since he was not a Canadian citizen, no proof of legal residency status, they would not just send him back to Canada.
But no, they can’t refuse entry to a US citizen - unless they use the pretext that there’s no proof of his/her citizenship. But then, they’d have to arrest them, which would require reasonable grounds. Having a passport would obviate that. After all, if a country could deny entry to a US citizen, where could they send them, unless they have a legal right to residence in another country. that then would create two classes of citizenship, those who could be deported and those who could not. (Which topic came up when Canada talked about revoking citizenship of people with dual citizenship for terrorist activity)
I’m not sure how old you are, or when you were a teenager, but this was not true in the '90s. While it was common to drive into Canada with just a driver’s license, for flying (or traveling by boat), they were much more stringent about requiring proof-of-citizenship. Like you, I also got away with it, but not without getting singled out for quite the stink eye from the US border guard on my way back.
This was in 1987, give or take a year. At the time, my Canadian-parent-living-illegally-in-the-US did not have a passport from any country, so we tended to rely on what I now recognize as various forms of privilege (race, class, langugage) to cross the border.
Yeah, I hear you. I imagine being a clean-cut, early-20s, white guy who spoke American-accented English probably helped a bit when I was trying to fly back to the US with nothing but a driver’s license.
But were you yourself actually born in the USA? Or was one parent a US citizen?
I wonder what databases the CBP had access to in those days? (Does your license application nowadays or then include the detail of place of birth?) back in the day, I used to use my birth certificate (wallet sized, laminated) as proof of citizenship going between Canada and the USA. Never had any trouble. I believe for the German fellow I referenced, that would have been mid-1990’s. He never explained how they knew he wasn’t Canadian. He was sufficiently not smart enough that he might even have told them he was born in Germany. Alternatively, maybe his parents’ citizenship application or his immigration records were in a database at that point.
Yes, I was born in the US, to one US-citizen parent (who was not present on that trip). These days, you can’t even take a minor child across an international border without showing the other parent’s consent, but then you could.
I believe I did have to show a birth certificate to get the driver’s license, but California didn’t require it be an American birth certificate, so the license alone wouldn’t have been proof of citizenship, just proof of identification. In other words, if pressed, I would have been able to prove my citizenship, and they certainly should have been able to had they been so inclined. I think I even had had a passport issued to me, though it was never used for travel and might have expired by then. They certainly would have been able to dig that up.
When I went through, the guard said to my mother (who also had a CA driver’s license but no proof of any citizenship), “Was that your son?” “Yes.” “Did you hear what I said to him?” “Yes.” “Have a nice day.”
On another note, there are plenty of stories of Kumeyaay Indians (local to San Diego) who were born in the US but could not prove it to the satisfaction of US authorities, and were deported to Mexico as aliens; Delfina Cuero is the most famous.
My wife, son (aged then 4), and I drove across the Washington, BC border in 1982. I showed my license, my son obviously didn’t have one, and my wife was asleep. I started to look for hers, but they just waved me through. That same summer she flew back into US to attend her brother’s wedding. I presume she showed her license. She’s never had a passport, and this was long before enhanced driver licenses.
We also both flew into and back out of Grand Cayman in 1999 with no passports, but then we did have to show licenses.
Prior to 2007, US citizens did not need a passport returning to the US from most of the Western Hemisphere. From the Wikipedia article on the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative:
Before 2007, to enter the United States from other parts of the Americas except Cuba, citizens of the United States, Canada and Bermuda were allowed to present any evidence of their citizenship, including merely an oral declaration. Nationals of Mexico could present a Border Crossing Card when arriving from Mexico or Canada. These exemptions applied to travel by any means of transportation.
Passports were required for travel by air starting in 2007, and for travel by any means in 2009.
They do have a passport card now, used for travel with certain Western Hemisphere countries. Oddly, you cannot travel by air to or from these countries. When I renewed my passport this year, was told I could get this instead or as in addition, but I said no.