ACLU Assails 100-Mile Border Zone as 'Constitution-Free'
Government agents should not have the right to stop and question Americans anywhere without suspicion within 100 miles of the border, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday, pointing attention to the little known power of the federal government to set up immigration checkpoints far from the nation's border lines.
The government has long been able to search people entering and exiting the country without need to say why, which is known as the border search exception of the Fourth Amendment.
"It is a classic example of law enforcement powers expanding far beyond their proper boundaries – in this case, literally,” said Caroline Fredrickson, who heads the ACLU's Washington, D.C., Legislative Office.
In a video shown to reporters at a national press conference event Wednesday, retired San Diego social worker Vince Peppard complained that he and his wife were stopped at a checkpoint on a road east of San Diego on I-94, many miles after crossing back into the United States with tiles he'd bought in Mexico.
When he refused to let the Customs and Border Protection officer search his car, the officer led him to a bench, called in the contraband dog and then "ransacked" his car.
"I didn't feel like I was inside the U.S.," Peppard said, calling the search on the side of the road embarrassing. "I felt like I was in a B-movie with Nazis asking for my papers."
ACLU attorney Chris Calabrese is certain there are more people who have been negatively affected than have complained.
As an example, he cited Seattle's domestic ferries, where DHS agents ask passengers for ID to check their citizenship and use license plate readers.
"The people who live on these islands are undergoing this extra scrutiny just when they are going to get their groceries," Calabrese said.
Be sure to hit the link and see the map there...You'll be amazed to find that Homeland Security has placed these Constitution Free Zones in such a manner as to encompass two thirds of our population. Obviously it is us, the citizens of the United Fascist States of America that are to be controlled, not immigrants. I too have to pass through one of these checkpoints--100 miles in from the border-- to go grocery shopping, and I drive away fuming each and every time. On several occasions, we've been hauled out of the vehicle to be searched and questioned. Once, in our RV, they claimed that the dogs signaled we might be smuggling an illegal alien...they searched everything, tearing through our luggage and all...apparently they thought I might have concealed a very small Mexican among my clean underwear. This is America? "Your Papers Please" for going to buy food?
1 comment:
I did a job on San Juan Island, WA that lasted about a week earlier this year. Nobody paid me any attention. Nor did I see any evidence of DHS. Of course, that doesn't mean they were not there. But I did have a truck with GPS gear and some other stuff in it. Who knows what flips their switch? Phil
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