Issues with US immigration after alleged overstay - how to handle?

I know someone who had a similar problem. He is a pilot and travels to the US frequently as part of an airline crew as well as privately.

At some point something similar to you happened: He was told that he had overstayed a 90-day-US-Tourist Visa at some point about 20 years ago. There was no chance of escaping the procedure of being taken to glass cube, waiting for 20 Minutes and then the usual interview. He even started to tell the officer at the immigration right away "I know... Overstepped visa...", but the procedure remained including the mandatory 20 minute penalty waiting. He tried to explain that he never had anything near 90 days of contiguous vacation in his job.

He tried lots of things to get rid of the record. He called the US embassy in his home country (Germany), tried some agency that claimed to help in such cases in London, but without success.

Maybe all the immigration forms were pilled somewhere in the basement up until some point after the attacks of 9/11, when some trainees were taken aside to type in everything into a computer backed database. And some of the forms were lost (just a theory, no idea how it actually happened).

Eventually someone told him that he should apply for a 5-year tourist visa, because "that's another database". The next time when his air crew visa expired he asked his airline whether he could get a tourist visa along with his air crew visa. After all it's just one more stamp. And magically from this point on the old overstepped visa was somehow forgotten.

What should we learn from this? 1) Being a global power does not mean that your procedures automatically work as designated and if something goes terribly wrong it is not necessarily because of some conspiracy but because of ah well... let's not get into this. 2) Maybe you have the same problem and can evade the problem the same way.

At this point your only option is to get an immigration lawyer and see if you can get this record removed. Otherwise you will have to go through this procedure every time you enter the United States.

Personally if you're traveling into the country once every 20 years I wouldn't bother but then again its just me.

The DHS TRIP program is meant to help travelers address situations like this.

You should obtain whatever evidence you can obtain that you did not overstay back in 1995, and prepare to submit it with this program. You don't submit evidence when you file the initial application; you'll be contacted after you file and asked to submit documents at that time.

There are many factors/reasons for this. One of them could be your nationality and the visa category you arrived on in 95 and 2013. As per procedure you have to surrender your I94 upon exiting US. I will be surprised if you being a frequent traveler did not know about this.

At the moment surrendering of I-94 is the only way USCIS can track entry and exit of foreign nationals (although the I94 is being completely done away with very soon). If any annotations have been marked on your passport, you are officially tagged.

If while applying for your new visa, in your DS-160 if you haven't mentioned that you overstayed, but the USCIS records show that you overstayed, you will be subject to scrutiny every time you enter/exit. If you cannot bear this, you will have to go the legal way with USCIS. Also be aware that if any fraud is detected, you may face a life ban from US. Sadly (and I think mostly due to the abuse of the system) 'fraud' for USCIS can be any misrepresentation. To prove whether it was willful or not is a different hill to climb.

Most people in similar circumstances that I know of, just go through this scrutiny every time. And if you find a helpful officer politely and humbly ask him what the real problem is and how it can be fixed.
HTH