Welcome to the Police States of America

Crossing the U.S.-Canada border to go to church on a Sunday cost a U.S. citizen $10,000 for breaching Washington's tough new security rules.  article

The guy lives on the border. Where he shops and goes to church happens to be on the Canadian side. New, tighter national security rules have closed his route.

...The local U.S. customs station [which is next door to Richard Albert, a resident of rural Maine] is closed on Sundays, so he just drove around the locked gate, as he had done every weekend since the gate appeared last May, following a tightening of border security.

Two days later, Albert was summoned to the customs office, where an officer told him he had been caught on camera crossing the border illegally.

Ottawa has granted special passes to some 300 U.S. citizens in that region so they can enter the country when Canadian customs posts are closed, but the United States canceled a similar program last May.

That forces local residents to make a 200-mile detour along treacherous logging roads to get home via the nearest staffed border checkpoint.

"Since 9/11, we've enhanced our security and, yes, some of the situations require inconvenience to people, so we have to go along with what the regulations are," said Janet Rapaport, a public affairs officer with the bureau. She added that local residents had been told about the stricter controls.

Albert has appealed the fine, but he has not attended a Sunday mass since.

"I feel like I'm living in a jail," he said.

You are.