Not to trivialize this in anyway, but this guy was lucky compared to what was done to Maher Arar.
On Sept. 26, 2002, Arar, while traveling on a Canadian passport, was detained in NYC's JFK International Airport while returning to Canada from Tunisia on family vacation. After being detained by US Immigration for almost two weeks without charge, he was deported to Syria. Canadian officials were not informed of the deportation until 2-3 days later. In Syria he was imprisoned for a year and tortured.
Arar was born in Syria in 1970, but emigrated to Canada in 1987 where he became a naturalized citizen, earned a Bachelor's and then a Master's in Engineering and had been employed in Ottawa as a Telecommunications engineer. Then he made the mistake of returning to Canada from vacation through the U.S.
More here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/