paxboy, the quote was from the link in the preceeding post. I apologise if that was too much for your attention span.
You are correct I was surmising what might have occurred based on reading between the lines in the story. If you have not experienced or witnessed such confrontations at a US Customs and Immigration post, then you should simply revel in your good fortune.
The US authorities have yet (to my knowledge) apologised for any of these err... misunderstandings wrt their 'secret' lists.