I also had a bad experience in Hawaii, while in transit, coming back from Australia, on a flight to Los Angeles where I had to transfer to another flight to Vancouver.

When we reach Honolulu, they made me open our my bags, where they searched everything, opening everything and making a mess of my clothes. Then, he inquired about my address book, and went through it page by page.

All that, because on my Canadian passport, my place of birth is Rio de Janeiro. It seems that the excuse was that since I was born in Brazil, I could still have connections there and could be transporting drugs, since, apparently, at least at that time, Brazil was in a list of drug exporting countries. The point is, I left Brazil for good in 1969 and this occurred about 20 years later.

I can imagine what must be happening for people who left Iran years ago but in their Canadian passports show their place of birth as Teheran. They probably must make every effort to not be in-transit in the US.

Helio in Vancouver