Anyone that is surprised by this or somehow thinks this is new clearly hasn't crossed the border a whole lot. I grew up in a city along the US/Canada border. You don't fuck around with US Customs (or Canadian) agents. My cousin (not always so friendly) pissed off a US Customs agent (in the 90s mind you) and they promptly took his car and disassembled much of it looking for non-existent drugs. When they put it back together it was never the same. Their job is to be suspicious, 99.999% of the time people are completely innocent. But let 1 bad person through and it's Customs' fault for whatever bad thing they do. Not an easy job. Not an excuse for how they can misbehave either.

Is it right? It makes no difference, Customs can make your life miserable, that's just the reality of it, always has been and it can't have gotten better in recent times.