Canadians' mental health care in US database at airport

Canadians With Mental Illnesses Denied U.S. Entry

Data entered into national police database accessible to American authorities: WikiLeaks

by Sarah Bridge September 09, 2011

More than a dozen Canadians have told the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office in Toronto within the past year that they were blocked from entering the United States after their records of mental illness were shared with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Lois Kamenitz, 65, of Toronto contacted the office last fall, after U.S. customs officials at Pearson International Airport prevented her from boarding a flight to Los Angeles on the basis of her suicide attempt four years earlier.

Kamenitz says she was stopped at customs after showing her passport and asked to go to a secondary screening. There, a Customs and Border Protection officer told Kamenitz that he had information that police had attended her home in 2006.

Kamenitz says she asked the officer how he had obtained her medical records.

A document completed by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer says that at a secondary inspection at Pearson airport in Toronto, it was ascertained that Lois Kamenitz had 'attempted suicide in 2006,' and a medical clearance would be required for a further attempt to enter the United States. (Sarah Bridge/CBC)

"That was the only thing I could think of," she says. "But he said, no, he didn’t have my medical records but he did have a contact note from the police that [they] had attended my home."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadians-with-mental-illnesses-denied-u-s-entry-1.1034903