[...] "At any rate," he continued, "you have all effected an illegal entry into the United States. None of you had a permit to enter."
"I, for one, did not know a permit was necessary." I explained. "Since I went to Canada three years ago, I have come in and out of the United States half a dozen times without a permit. I was never asked for one. I never met with an immigration inspector on the train. The only officials I ever ran across at the border were custom officers. They would come aboard and inspect the baggage."
"That does not alter the fact that this time you are all in the United States illegally," he went on.
"I won't concede even that," I told him. "We were interviewed on the Canadian side of the border. The train was not in motion. If we were not admissible for any reason, it seems to me that that was the time to exclude us. The inspector should have told us then.
"The inspector does not need to be told by you what he should or should not have done," the attorney interrupted.
"It seems to me that he does too," I poured back at him, losing my head. "It was his duty to warn us. To keep us from violating the law. Regardless of whether or not we were ignorant of the law. Instead, he actually coaxed us, led us, into a violation of the law in order to make a record for himself. I have no earthly use for that sort of public official. He, and not I, is the one who should be charged with smuggling those aliens."
"You will sing a different tune in a couple of months from now," he threatened with a leer.
"Maybe I will and, yet, maybe I won't," I snapped back. By then I was ready to relegate him to the seventh hell. If I didn't tell him so, he certainly read my mind because he brought the interview to a close. [...]
.
