Belarusian woman from the USA with an expired passport was taken to the basement at the border and had her phone checked. She compared Belarusian border guards to angels

The author of the YouTube channel "Belarusian in America" lives in the American state of Minnesota. She posted a video about her trip to Belarus. The woman was traveling to visit relatives and wanted to see her three-year-old grandson for the first time, having only seen him via video call until then.

Her Belarusian passport had been expired for about a year and a half. According to her, previously it was possible to renew a passport without leaving America, but "circumstances have changed." Since September 2023, Belarusian consulates do not issue or renew passports. To travel, the woman obtained an entry permit, and for this, she had to go to Washington, where the Belarusian embassy is located. Before this, as she recounted in a previous video, her documents ended up not at the Belarusian embassy, but at the Nicaraguan embassy. This happened due to a postal worker's error and, as she admits, her own inattentiveness.

They flew the route Minneapolis — Amsterdam — Vilnius, and from Vilnius, they took a bus to Minsk. The bus stood at the border from midnight until six in the morning. Filming at the checkpoint is not allowed, so she recounts the events that happened there on camera once back in the USA.

At the Belarusian checkpoint, the woman handed the border guard her expired passport, entry permit, and American passport. She was asked to step aside and wait. Meanwhile, the rest of her family passed through control.

"After some time, a border guard approached me. He took the documents from the woman and said: 'Follow me.' And I followed him, not understanding at all what was happening or where they were taking me," she recounts.

According to her, they passed through several corridors and descended into the basement. There was a narrow, dimly lit corridor with six or seven chairs along the wall. "Pale light, semi-empty rooms, long corridors. In some rooms, I noticed bars," the woman describes. Then, she says, a thought flashed through her mind that whoever ended up here would not get out.

She asked the border guard how much longer she had to wait. He replied: "I don't know, they will call you." Later, she asked why she was brought there. The border guard said he didn't know and that everything would be explained to her.

Approximately 15-20 minutes later, she was called into an office. She felt they had descended even further for this. In a room about 4 by 4 meters, a man in military uniform sat at one desk, and a woman in her forties, also in uniform, sat at another. The man asked for her phone and, while asking questions, browsed her social networks. He asked why she was entering with an expired passport, where she worked and lived, if she drove a car, what her hobbies were, and how long she planned to stay in Belarus.

After this, the conversation turned to faith and politics. The woman assumes that the officer looked at her Facebook page, where she publishes poems and quotes from the Bible. "I see that you are a religious person," he said and asked about her denomination. Then he asked how she felt about the current politics of Belarus. The woman replied that she does not build her life on political ideas and that her main guide is the Bible.

She says she was not afraid of her phone: "I was not in any prohibited groups, did not conduct any prohibited correspondence, did not leave political comments against any particular country. I did not try to delete or hide anything beforehand."

After the check, the officer returned her phone and told her she was free. He also escorted her out of the building, as she didn't know the way. On the way, he explained that she was "not detained." According to him, people crossing the border with expired documents sometimes undergo additional checks.

The video's author emphasizes that she was treated correctly: "I did not feel any rudeness, insolence, or disrespect." She mentions that before the trip, she had heard stories of people being detained, interrogated, and treated roughly at the border. That's why she decided to share an instance where "everything happened calmly and correctly."

The woman compared the border guards to angels. According to her, about seven years ago, she dreamt of angels standing along the entire border of Belarus with automatic rifles in their hands. At the checkpoint, she recalled that dream. "I thought that these young men are like angels. They stand guard, protecting their homeland, protecting its borders from any kind of enemy attack," she says.

She published the video approximately a month after returning from Belarus. According to her, "certain circumstances that arose" did not allow her to post it earlier. She does not specify what those circumstances were.

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