Group of Boy Scouts Held at Gunpoint at U.S. Border

Illegal immigrants may be streaming across the southern U.S. border, but there's one American border that's seemingly very secure: the border between Canada and Alaska.

It's so secure that a troop of Iowa Boy Scouts found themselves held at gunpoint by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents for making the wrong moves, KCCI-TV reported.

Image source: screengrab via KCCI-TV

Boy Scout Troop 111 Leader Jim Fox told KCCI that a series of aggressive actions from CBP agents made the troop's crossing from Canada into Alaska take four hours, and it all started when one Scout snapped a picture of an agent.

“The agent immediately confiscated his camera, informed him he would be arrested, fined possibly $10,000 and 10 years in prison,” Fox said.

Fox said he didn't make a fuss, since he was trying to keep the incident from escalating, but soon afterwards, as the boys unpacked the van, an agent inexplicably escalated anyway.

“[A boy retrieving luggage from the top of the van] hears a snap of a holster, turns around, and here’s this agent, both hands on a loaded pistol, pointing at the young man’s head,” Fox told KCCI.

Image source: screengrab via KCCI-TV

At the end of the ordeal, no one was injured or arrested, but Fox contrasted the situation his troop encountered against the porous U.S. border with Mexico.

"I am outraged by the fact that we have 18 Boy Scouts that want to come home, yet we have southern borders... like a sieve," Fox said.

Scouting leadership characterized the situation as a learning experience.

“We want to make sure [Scouts] follow the rules," said Charles Vonderheid of the Mid-Iowa Council of the Boy Scouts of America. "A Scout is a good citizen. It would be a great lesson in civics for that young man and that troop.”

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