Stossel: Border Patrol can't control Southern border but can still harass American citizens

[jct74]

Border Patrol can't control Southern border but can still harass American citizens

By John Stossel
August 06, 2014

If I drive across a U.S. border, I expect to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint. But imagine driving to the grocery store, or Mom's house, well inside America, and being stopped by the Border Patrol. Many Americans don't have to imagine it -- it's how they live.

Even as the federal government fails to control the southern border, it sends the Border Patrol farther into the interior, where Americans complain that agents harass people who are already U.S. citizens.

It's legal. The Supreme Court ruled that the Border Patrol can set up "inland" checkpoints anywhere up to 100 miles from an external border of the United States. That's what government now considers a "reasonable distance" from the border.

But that means the zone within which you could be stopped and searched includes much of Florida and California, and all of Maine and New Hampshire. Two-thirds of America's population lives that close to the border.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyer James Lyall argues, "Interior checkpoints fundamentally fly in the face of what it means to live in a free society, where you don't have to answer to federal agents when you're going about your daily business."

...

read more:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014...outhern-border-but-can-still-harass-american/

 

[presence]

International Airports are "functionally equivilent to borders"

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL31826.pdf

page 7

A search at the border’s functional equivalent is constitutionally valid

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

 

[Henry Rogue]

Lake Michigan doesn't belong to Canada.

 

[presence]

Lake Michigan doesn't belong to Canada.

Interesting insight... I had not noticed that "stretch", it was commented about here as well:


http://www.dbstalk.com/topic/202209...devices-within-100-miles-of-border-okd/page-2

So apparently we do have 4th amendment rights in Chicago

INA §287(a)(3), 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a)(3). This statute also authorizes searches without warrant “within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States.” Reasonable distance is defined by 8 C.F.R. § 287.1(a)(2) to mean “within 100 air miles from any external boundary of the United States or any shorter distance which may be fixed by the chief patrol agent of CBP, or the special agent in charge of ICE.” External boundary is defined by 8 C.F.R. § 287.1(a)(1) to mean “the land boundaries and the territorial sea of the United States extending 12 nautical miles from the baselines of the United States determined in accordance with international law.”

 

[presence]

An important court case that stands on your side during one of these searches is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almeida-Sanchez_v._United_States
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6933260753627774699
Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 US 266 - Supreme Court 1973

as well as the Carroll Doctrine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_v._United_States