I don't believe many of the things the border patrol does is actually intended in law. They like to claim it is, even bring out all sorts of papers, but in reality its stretching the whole idea so far it wraps around space-time. Border inspections were written in the constitution to support finding people who are avoiding duties and tariffs.
IIRC they asked for those but they didn't get them because the other federal law enforcement gangs didn't want their turf encroached on. Did that change?
I would say that most of America does not care for the vigorous defense of the second amendment but there is one very vocal organization and subgroup that does. It attempts to defend it against any abridgment no matter how minor or what others cite as "reasonable".
The problem isn't the NRA's and gun owners staunch defense of the second amendment it's wondering why people aren't more inclined to defend the fourth amendment. Too many people accept the incremental abridgment of our constitutional protections because they seem "reasonable". Never looking forward to what the long term outcome will be.
Instead of being critical of the tenacity of how the second is defended, tenaciously defending the others would be a good use of energy. Every protection should be fought like the NRA fights gun control, but it's easier point and blame than build up.
NRA expenses $423 million
ACLU budget $235 million
Considering only 43% of US households own guns, and 100% use the 4th amendment we can that there's a huge number of apathetic people for you to motivate instead of tearing down something else.
Go ahead and down vote because it's easier than reading the numbers and doing something. This is why we are in this problem.
It's not as if NRA are supported by taxes. If they're spending enough defending 2A, that just leaves the rest of us to defend the rest of the Constitution. ACLU, EFF, etc. take donations...
As a rule, I downvote people who as for it because I don't like the attempt at manipulation, like you're somehow disarming or pre-empting people who would've downvoted you for their own reasons instead of the condescending one you offer.
I edited my post and added the last part because it was being down voted. You're not always the first to read something.
There's nothing condescending in my post, if you read it that way then it is a reflection of you and your perceptions.
It's a very simple point. You can point at others and whine that why do they have such staunch supporters, because all you can to is teardown, or you view as an incentive to motivate getting everyone more involved and passionate about defending all of the other freedoms with the same tenacity.
> It attempts to defend it against any abridgment no matter how minor or what others cite as "reasonable".
That's what is so great about the second amendment. We don't have to argue over how much abridgment is acceptable because the amendment itself prescribes how much abridgment is acceptable.
There are always restrictions to mitigate the extreme cases.
EG: You can't own fully automatic weapons manufactured after 1986. What this restriction does is create an [artificial] floor price on any fully auto stuff to deter casual purchase - to the point a completely ghetto MAC-10 costs like $8K-9K, but because it was made before 1986 it is good to go. (To be clear, as a multi-gun owner, I think this is a fair compromise between no regulations and no guns.)
Another: Unauthorized possession of a nuclear weapon is banned by multiple laws, not just one, for example. Also if your desire to attempt to possess or possess said nuclear weapon was coupled with the intent to use it, well, that's another felony layered on.
Not trying to be overly-pedantic, but when people say "will not be infringed" I translate that to mean handguns, shotguns, and rifles (up to semi-automatic). Anything beyond those definitions start getting into what I will concede are legitimate "weapons of war" (machine guns, explosives, biological weapons) which merits restriction.
In the US, anything bigger than a 50 caliber round is classified as a "destructive device". Also included in that categories are grenade launchers, artillery shells, and I believe technically nuclear weapons. Interestingly enough flamethrowers are not classified as destructive devices.
> Not trying to be overly-pedantic, but when people say "will not be infringed" I translate that to mean handguns, shotguns, and rifles (up to semi-automatic). Anything beyond those definitions start getting into what I will concede are legitimate "weapons of war" (machine guns, explosives, biological weapons) which merits restriction.
I think you have a very skewed view of the purpose of the 2nd Amendment. "Weapons of war" is exactly the sort of thing it should be protecting. Ban handguns? Fine (under the amendment) - no one uses those in war (minus epsilon). I wouldn't be happy with it, since they're rather useful for self defence, but I could at least see it being justified. But short barreled shotguns? Submachine guns? Assault rifles? Anti-materiel rifles and RPGs? MANPADS, mortars and artillery? All those should be perfectly fine and dandy under the 2nd amendment, as evidenced by the privately owned warships and cannon around the beginning of the 19th century.
Yes, this means that it's been infringed a hell of a lot. Which is part of why gun rights groups fight so hard - give a little more ground, and there might not be any more to fall back to.
Yeah I appreciate your comments, but I respectfully disagree.
I have tangible reasons why I believe that fully automatic weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, and nuclear weapons should NOT be legal for civilian ownership in most cases (am open to someone appealing or stating their case -- eg I'm a weapons creator and wish to create weapons for the state).
As for why I think that the 2nd Amendment was intended to cover weapons of war - all the weapons of war - it was written following a successful revolution against an oppressive government, made possible by individuals already owning their own weapons. Oh, and Britain had tried to confiscate those, too. Yes, they wouldn't have anticipated the ABCs of strategic weaponry and perhaps those would be excluded, but almost anything below that has analogues in the 1700s. (And lumping automatic weapons in with atomic, biological and chemical weapons is kinda murder, arson and jaywalking IMO)
What do you do when your 4th amendment is violated? If it is violated and no evidence of a crime turns up, you usually don't have a reason to sue (even though you have standing) and would rather save the time and money. If evidence of a crime does turn up, you're usually left holding the bag for your own defense because you may not be an attractive client to pro bono lawyers or the ACLU.
There are tons of people who have their rights violated every day and are given unjust sentences across the nation. The only remedy is probably the second amendment.
I have to agree - the problem isn't "gun rights are being defended too enthusiastically", the problem is "all rights are insufficiently defended, but gun rights defenders are slightly less insufficient than other civil liberties groups".
But then so many people turn around and say that they're fine with rights they don't like being infringed...
how do you make money defending the 4th ammendment? the NRA is basically a gun advertising agency. They're there to sell guns and using the 2nd amendment to do it
There are specific legal exemptions to the 4th amendment for the CBP, allowing them to do searches when crossing the border. The question here is if these exemptions apply, as the person in question was not crossing the border.
Those exemptions (which existed as you describe them for quite a while) were widened after 9/11 to give them those same powers when interacting with anyone within 100 miles of the board.
ACLU will stop defending the right of assembly to people who intend to be armed, and their reasoning is... reasonable. They've been very active in supporting the other 1st, 4th, 14th amendment rights of gun owners and have given no indication that is changing.
No, it isn't hyperbole, officers of the law in these zones are given leeway to violate the fourth amendment without any of the normal exceptions (like exigent circumstances) applying.
That said, it isn't usually exercised... but that sort of makes it worse since any usages of their elevated powers can be applied arbitrarily and without consistency which, IMO, is intensely worrying in a country where incarceration rates by race are so wildly out of balance with population proportions.
It is hyperbole, because the situation missing is the nexus with the border.
Driving in Queens doesn't give CBP the ability to pull you over and rip apart your car. Picking up someone at JFK may give them the ability for them to do so on the way home.
Except it actually does, they probably won't exercise that ability frequently, but they have the power to do that without any inherent legal restrictions or conditions.
A CBP officer could yank you out of your car on the cross bronx expressway and then search the vehicle top to bottom and your legal recourse would be to hope that CBP feels bad and reimburses you somehow, you would be owed no legal damages because it isn't illegal.
This isn't hyperbole, it's actually that ridiculous.
> Under the “extended border search” doctrine, government officials may conduct a warrantless search beyond the border or its functional equivalent if (1) the government officials have a reasonable certainty that a border was crossed or there exists a “high degree of probability” that a border was crossed; (2) they also have reasonable certainty that no change in the object of the search has occurred between the time of the border crossing and the search; and (3) they have “reasonable suspicion” that criminal activity was occurring.
In online reporting, there is often significant confusion between the "Extended Border Area" (ie. the 100 mile zone) and the "Functional Equivalent of the Border" (ie. an airport customs zone).
So, prior to this thing there was always an exemption for warrantless searches carried out under exigent circumstances. The addition of this law does nothing but weaken an existing, and highly clarified, exemption.
The current policy has been in effect since the Korean War. It’s difficult to compare pre-war policy to today. Border activity was mostly about taxation in those days.
The only new thing is the increased size of the sprawling bureaucracy of Customs and the Border Control, and the increased tempo of operations.
The real problem is the growth of executive power and the supine nature of the Congress and courts. This particular issue has attention due to the disgusting conduct of the current administration. We live in an era where the President believes that he posses banana republic like presidential immunity and executive privilege.
No, that’s exactly what it means. Law enforcement officers are agents of the state. The state not respecting your constitutional rights is equivalent to not having them.
Hyperbole doesn’t help. We need to push back against this interpretation of the powers of the CBP, and it doesn’t make that case well to just say “constitution free zone.”
It’s a specific exception they are claiming, and I think most people feel that exception is being claimed too broadly.
It’s not a “constitution free zone.” Most of the constitution obviously and clearly still applies.
CBP has been infamous for asserting that the Constitution doesn't apply at all in these border areas. I wouldn't put it past the government to harass this person further, so I don't blame the person for not wanting their name in the public sphere (even still, they might harass him, I'm sure there are enough details in the story for them to identify him).
The US government has basically turned the Constitution into toilet paper, only useful when they want to pay lip service to the inherent rights of the people. Any other time, they prefer to wipe their ass with it.
You don't know whether it's "not just fiction" nor would you if they published this citizens name. What you do know is that the author, the publication, and its editor are all willing to put their professional reputation on the line to guarantee the correctness of their reporting.
That's kind of how journalism works.
When in doubt assume honesty. The US has had a rash of accusations of "Fake News" recently and we all need to work together to actively reject that narrative before we're all asking each other "what the definition of is is".
They mention Cellebrite because they share specific stats on how much data they can copy off a device in a given time. It's essentially used as a source for the end of the paragraph where they explain why it matters that CBP had their phones for that period.
I am not making a judgement on if this was good or bad, either way, as we do not have all the facts (especially as the border patrol declined to comment, so we only have one side).
On the other hand, I think the headline and the tone of the article definitely want me to judge this as "bad" on the part of the border patrol.
Indeed, I strongly believe in personal privacy and due process.
However, there is a fact buried in the article that makes this a non-routine pickup indeed:
"""He was asked for his identification in order to pay the small duty fee for his daughter’s gifts, and only then realized that he’d left his wallet at home. When he explained this, that he’d made an honest mistake and wanted only to pay the routine duty owed and depart, he was told that in fact he wasn’t permitted to leave."""
So again, I agree in general that the privacy protections afforded to U.S. citizens are very important; but, I am not so surprised after reading this that things went sideways.
It seems to me, many government agencies and employees are used to things going a certain way, and as soon as something unexpected happens, they clamp down and things can get a lot more serious.
A few years ago I was flying domestically between two states, and the fancy bomb detection thing flagged me. Of course, I wasn't carrying anything remotely explosive. Nonetheless, I was taken to a back room with a supervisor and two regular homeland security agents. I was told this time they would search my bag and scan me again. If it came back negative, I would be free to go. If it came back positive, they would conduct a strip search. Thankfully, it came back negative.
I nearly missed my flight, it was incredibly terrifying in the moment, but I didn't feel like my rights were violated. According to the agents, the most likely cause was that I had used hand sanitizer prior to getting in the security line.
Back to the article -- personally, I'm very interested in the results of the court proceedings, but unclear how to keep track of them.
What I found more interesting from other comments on this thread is that you don't have to be crossing a border, just within 100 miles of one, to be harassed in a way that would seem unconstitutional. The "65% of the population" living in this border zone area really struck me as a serious overreach. If you live in nearly every major US city you're susceptible to what OP went through it seems.
One of these days I expect to hear CBP say "we need more than 100 miles radius of authority, so now it's 200 miles". If we're not careful, CBP will end up with 100% coverage of their supposed "authority".
FWIW, that's actually a little overplayed. I'm a staunch ACLU supporter, but they kinda went too far with the "constitution-free zone" bit. DHS has never claimed any such authority, they just say they can do warrantless searches at the actual border and it's "functional equivalent" which is not the 100 mile zone, but rather the areas of international airports and such where people first step on US soil and are effectively crossing the border.
In the 100 mile zone, they definitely have to have a defensible "reasonable suspicion" of criminal activity before they can stop & search someone.
This article mentions an instance where they colluded with local LE to harass citizens near a marijuana festival. Also deportable arrests are abysmally low, whereas their drug related arrests are absurdly high. It really sounds like they're a branch of DEA.
Yeah, the TSA can be rigid like that. They did the same thing to my octogenarian grandmother (we think her hair spray caused it), and now she refuses to fly.
The point is that Americans are not legally required to produce identification within American border so long as they're not driving. They're required to honestly answer authorities when asked their name, but that's it.
This guy wasn't traveling, and therefore had zero legal requirement to produce ID.
> The point is that Americans are not legally required to produce identification within American border so long as they're not driving. They're required to honestly answer authorities when asked their name, but that's it.
By your own metric, he required ID, because he drove to the border patrol station.
To pick up a package from customs, not to travel through the border. He also might not have been driving the car, and there was not way for customs to know.
Which he knew he needed his ID for, because he had done so many times before.
The point I am making is simply that it is not so surprising to me that when things go outside of the normal process, things may go sideways when dealing with potentially hostile government agents.
The fact that CBP can do whatever they want without a need to produce any justification is a red-flag already. I wonder if there are precedents of successfully suing them for something like this.
They may voluntarily do so, but they are not compelled to do so. That's a seriously big issue and a common way for tyranny to get a foothold - going against convention and tradition because they aren't legally binding while hiding in a technicality of the law.
If the US government doesn't generally need sovereign immunity then it should be forced to surrender the right to exercise it or it'll be used in the worst way the first way.
So how exactly is this news? You go to a border crossing without ID, you're going to get detained until they figure out who you are. They're not just going to take your work for it that you 'left your id at home'. It also sounds like he ended up talking to the same people that process people actually crossing which makes this even more tricky. How is that person supposed to know the guy didn't get off a bus (which stop there and people go inside the building) and is just saying something to get past them?
So how exactly is this news? You go to a border crossing without ID, you're going to get detained until they figure out who you are.
I disagree. I go to the airport (a border crossing) regularly to pick people up or drop people off and I definitely do not expect to be detained while they figure out who I am.
It also sounds like he ended up talking to the same people that process people actually crossing which makes this even more tricky.
I disagree. It's pretty clear that if you're outside the secure area through which those who arrive from the other country are herded, it's not at all tricky. The fact that the person he was talking to sometimes does the passport checking seems irrelevant.
> I disagree. It's pretty clear that if you're outside the secure area through which those who arrive by aircraft are herded, it's not at all tricky.
This did not take place at an Airport, but rather, a Canadian/US border patrol station where according to someone else in this thread, a bus stop for border crossing exists.
It seems entirely reasonable to me that those agents are more vigilant against "I totally forgot my ID at home".
I maintain that simply being at a border crossing should not be grounds for detaining, but I do recognise that while a competent border crossing would make it impossible for someone to simply walk into the sterile "crossing zone" (and in airports such zones are usually pretty solid), this is not exactly a department known for competency.
Edit: Now that I consider it, it would seem really incompetent to just not notice which direction someone came from. This would allow people to cross the border all day with impunity. Pure speculation, but I bet they knew exactly which way he came from; they just felt like hassling some muslim looking guy without ID because they could (although I recognise that in the US, carrying a driving license everywhere seems to be a weird cultural phenomenon).
Peace Bridge gets millions of crossing per year, tens of thousands per day. Your speculation that they kept track of what direction someone was coming from, and just did this to hassle a “Muslim looking guy” (what does that even mean?) is totally ridiculous.
If they don't keep track of which direction people come from, and that person doesn't have any paperwork, how do they know which side to tell them to go back to? What's stopping someone crossing from Canada saying "Oh, sorry, left my ID at home, I'll go back and get it, from my home, in the US, where I just came from" and then just continue into the US?
“Muslim looking guy” (what does that even mean?)
You don't have to agree with it to know what a "muslim looking guy" means. It means "someone whose looks Arabic or Persian, possibly with a beard". That's what it means. It's wrong, and it's prejudical, and in a strictly literal sense the words are inherently nonsensical, but that's what it means. I think you knew that already and for some passive-aggressive reason you're pretending you didn't.
> (although I recognise that in the US, carrying a driving license everywhere seems to be a weird cultural phenomenon).
Perhaps less "weird cultural phenomenon" and more "it's about the same size as a credit card", plus "it's probably the only broadly accepted government-issued ID you've got, so there's a variety of things things you might need it for, some of which you might not expect when you leave the house", resulting in "just leave it in your wallet or your handbag or wherever you carry such things".
If you're already generally leaving it with all the other miscellany you carry by default, it'd be more effort and more risk to take it out whenever you don't think you'd need it than to just leave it in your wallet/bag. If you're going to buy something, generally you'd have your wallet.
How do you handle such things, then? Honestly curious.
I genuinely cannot remember the last time I needed to produce ID that didn't involve travelling to another country, so I just don't carry any. I live in the UK; there is (as the US) no government ID card, as there is in many other European countries.
My wallet is quite small, I will say; I just have a rubber band around a couple of credit cards and potentially some folded banknotes, so I don't carry general "miscellany". I may be an outlier; if I'm going out to the shops or the gym or some such, I'll also leave my phone at home.
Fair enough. For me (in the US), I have a driver's license but don't own a car, I don't need ID often, but if I leave it in my wallet, there's a much smaller chance that I'll forget it when I do need it (e.g. picking up a prescription at the pharmacy)
You're not thinking of the CBP's job and the effort delta of a traveler with ID and one WITHOUT. The latter probably triggers all sorts of additional checks, paperwork, and hassles for everyone involved.
> How is that person supposed to know the guy didn't get off a bus (which stop there and people go inside the building) and is just saying something to get past them?
Yeah no. That's not how border crossings work at all.
It would be pretty embarrassing if people going in, going out, and those who are there to visit the customs office weren't kept separate.
But then I'm only assuming that border crossings in the US work the same way as border crossings elsewhere. Maybe they're a clown fiesta instead. Who knows.
No this is reasonable. There is no reason he would be talking to the same people. Sure the same border agent can work incoming/outgoing, but not at the same time (not at any airport or road crossing I've ever been through).
Border agents should know which side they're facing and which direction those people are traveling in. If they're not, they're incompetent.
It was at the peace bridge which is a little weird, I've crossed there and had to go inside many many times. The building is quite small as well. If you look on the maps you can see it's not like there's a 'visitor' area, just an employee lot.
There's also a u-turn to return to America without passing Canadian customs on the Canada side, but you're going to still have to explain to the Americans why you're crossing. My money is on this being how it happened.
All of that aside, thinking about it more, it's kind of weird that they'd even ask him to go to the peace bridge to begin with instead of any other CBP point in the area
There are no ‘people going out’ there; the US does not have exit controls. This is an entry point, and getting there from the US side requires passing ‘TO CANADA’ signs and turning around before the Canadian entry point.
The burden of proof is on the government agents, not on the victim. Did they have any evidence that he crossed the border apart from their own accumulated occupational biases? If not, then they had no justification to do what they did.
The border search exception says that proximity to a border is inherently justification to search people without a warrant or probable cause, so the position of the Supreme Court is that agents don't have the normal burden of evidence for such actions. US v. Martinez-Fuerte went further and held that drivers can be directed to secondary screening without even reasonable suspicion.
The article is accurate but misleading when it discusses the conditions for these searches. (For instance, "calls into question whether the man, who is Muslim, was singled out because of his faith", "the border search exception is grounded in traversal of the border itself".) It's true that this raises questions about whether profiling was used, but the implicit "which is illegal" is false: the border search caselaw explicitly permits otherwise-illegal ethnic profiling. And "grounded in traversal" does not mean "pursuant to evidence of traversal": once again, Martinez suggests that searches to check whether someone has crossed are legal. Even "accumulated occupational biases" are a search rationale as 'training' and 'professional experience'.
There are a number of reasons this search still appears illegal, and the counsels interviewed for the story are understandably dubious But the boundaries of what's legal here extend well past what I find horrifying: searching people at the border without proof, explicitly on the basis of institutional opinions and racial profiling, has been upheld as legal.
CBP agents could not go to the bathroom without following a written procedure - the government's sine qua non is natural language code. As such, The Government writing a methodology for how The Government can perform a certain action is not convincing in and of itself.
More concretely, this idea of a 100 mile "exception" is utter nonsense, especially with significant population living within that area. But the Supreme Court identified with the power-desire to carry out such searches, and so performed enough logical gymnastics to create a plausible justification. And while its dubious conclusions certainly affect the practical ability of its victims to obtain straightforward justice, We The People should certainly not buy into their claims as universal when weighing whether The Government has run aground of its charter.
Their thought was probably "personal phone for normal stuff and burner phone for illegal activities". I would argue carrying two phones (especially if one is very cheap) makes you slightly more suspicious, but it's probably not a very strong signal. Something that warrants a closer look, nothing more.
Honestly, when warrants get involved then pretty much every objection I would have to the situation in this article gets thrown out. I would assume the warrant is issued in good faith by a judge that considered all the circumstances around the warrant and, thankfully, there are processes to correct warrants issued in bad faith and that will generally result in a fruit of the poisonous tree situation
15 years ago, I brought back a suitcase full of pirated DVDs and knockoff purses. Most people are better off declaring uncontroversial minimums on declarations forms rather than naively being "too honest" because they're going to cause themselves and others no end of problems trying too hard to be "honest" while simultaneously incriminating themselves by filling out forms incorrectly by not using street smarts. Carrying ID and making the bureaucrat's job easier, where possible, will lead to smoother sailing for the traveler.
Did you declare all the DVDs and purses in your "15 years ago" case? Other than that, it is not clear what you are saying is naively too honest and what goes wrong by being honest.
> This time, however, when he arrived at the bridge office as instructed, carrying a handwritten note from the original customs office, the man, a U.S. citizen, was detained and searched by Customs and Border Protection, he said. His phones were seized and his car rifled through. His father and cousin, who had been waiting in the vehicle, were themselves detained, ordered into the office to answer questions about their national backgrounds.
The fact that the man is a US citizen is interposed into an otherwise chronological narrative to make the reader evaluate the reasonableness of the border agents’ actions against information the border agents do not have.
I agree, that part of the article is particularly poorly written - but it doesn't change the fact that there shouldn't have been such unreasonable suspicion to begin with.
It's relevant, and pretty critical to the entire story. He wasn't traveling. He was picking up a package. The purpose of the 4th amendment to applying at border crossings is to secure the border. Everything customs did in this case should be totally and completely illegal.
The issue isn’t the relevance, but the way the fact is interjected within the otherwise chronological narrative. Imagine if the fact of his US citizenship had come at the end, when CBP was able to learn about it. The story would read very differently.
How would borders work if CBP was simply required to accept people’s unsubstantiated assertion that they were citizens who just forgot their ID?
CBP doesn't need "cause" to detain someone at the border. That's the whole point of the border search exception. One of the very first things the framers did in 1789 was to set up a system of searches and seizures at the border that, unlike searches and seizures elsewhere, required no "probable cause."
> How would borders work if CBP was simply required to accept people’s unsubstantiated assertion that they were citizens who just forgot their ID?
Hold on. Nobody objects to citizens having to show identification or risk detention when crossing the border. The issue is that the man wasn't crossing the border.
Borders would work just fine if CBP could only require identification at the border. In fact, I suspect if you were to poll Americans, most probably think that this is already the case. That's why this was an issue to begin with: presumably if the man had known he was going to be detained if he didn't bring his ID, he would have done that.
It's like if you went to the DMV to take a driving test, having forgotten your ID at home, and instead of telling you to come back with your ID the DMV staff took you into custody. You'd be pretty outraged, citizen or not.
> Borders would work just fine if CBP could only require identification at the border.
No they wouldn't. In many cases it's impossible to put a border checkpoint at the literal border. That's why they're often at choke points in the transportation system near borders.
I think there's a reasonable debate to be had about whether those choke points should be on highways dozens of miles from the literal border. That's not the situation here.
> In fact, I suspect if you were to poll Americans, most probably think that this is already the case. That's why this was an issue to begin with: presumably if the man had known he was going to be detained if he didn't bring his ID, he would have done that.
How people expect border crossings to work has no relevance. The question is what is an "unreasonable" search and seizure under the fourth amendment. The Constitution uses the fuzzy term "unreasonable" precisely because it acknowledges the legitimate need of the government to search and detain people without a warrant. Effectuating the nation's sovereign right to control its borders is one of those reasons. A rigid mechanical rule that only permits searches of people as they cross the literal border cannot be reconciled with the much more--well, reasonable--language the fourth amendment uses.
This misses the point. The issue isn't whether the border crossing checkpoint is at the literal line separating the countries. I didn't mean "at the border" in the sense of "one foot in Canada and one in the US"; I meant "intending to enter the United States from Canada". (That's what the lawyer quoted in the article says: "It is incumbent on CBP to determine when someone is actually trying to enter or leave the country.") Nobody cares that the Canada border crossing is a few hundred yards away from the actual 49th parallel. People do care that someone who obviously didn't mean to cross the border at all was detained for interacting with customs and forgetting ID, when they were making a good-faith effort to obey the customs laws.
The fact that nobody expects to be detained for the equivalent of a DMV trip is a good indication that this was "unreasonable" per the plain meaning of the word. Maybe case law says otherwise. But ask a "reasonable" person on the street what the appropriate response of a customs agent to someone (citizen or not) who forgot their ID to take care of some bureaucratic hurdle on a package is, especially when the agency was supposed to be aware of the person's arrival (note the mention of the email in the article). That's what I care about.
I should mention, by the way, that the pedestrian lane at a US-Canada border crossing typically has a queue on the Canada side, and the border agent calls groups in one-by-one, just as at an airport. I have no idea how someone just trying to interact with customs, who drove up and parked their car on the US side, could be confused with someone trying to enter the US. It's worth looking at a map of the Peace Bridge [1]. This isn't a checkpoint some ways away from the border; it's a road with one way into the US, through the checkpoint (and the Niagara River in between the two countries!) Unless you have a flying car, there is no way you could end up with a car on the US side without having already gone through border security. The incompetence itself is ridiculous.
Yea I was wondering that too. I've never paid duties on shipping persona hard drive backups internationally (LUKS encrypted of course), but the shipping chargers were really high, so I assumed duties/taxes were rolled into the shipping/deceleration .. I really should have looked carefully at those recipes.
Either approach, the way it's written or the exclusion of the citizenship mention, is forcing a viewpoint into the narrative. It is very technically hard to write in an actually neutral manner, but this line was something that an editor should've cut out since it is clearly slanting the expression.
All that said, I think it's quite reasonable to favor the viewpoints of the dis-empowered, as the opposite approach would serve to reinforce any existing tyranny. The government is a large organization that has quite a lot of resources at it's fingertips - a private citizen... not so much.
That 100-mile border thing really bothers me, since it includes basically every major city in the US. Does anyone know if there's been any legal challenges to this ruling in court?
And now an annoying aside. I really wish the ACLU was sincere in fighting this but they won't get any more of my money. I used to support the ACLU because these were the types of P1 issues they would battle. It seems in the last years it's faded to more social justice platform. Fine for them if that's what they believe are the most pressing issues of our time, but not my P1 constitutional concerns.
What's the point of anything if the government can railroad your 1st and 4th amendment rights? Are there good alternatives to the ACLU of yore?
Yeah no. Last time I had to go for work was quite unpleasant too.
The border agent was a complete moron and on a power trip. Kept going on about how American citizenship law doesn’t allow dual nationality. So no sir you can’t have two passports. Which I’m pretty sure is bullshit but I’m not gonna argue with a border agent. Was really hoping that he’d be bright enough to grasp that neither of the two passports he’s holding is bloody American though.
Actually yea, when I got my second citizenship I was explicitly informed about the legal difficulties of two passports. It is somewhat advised to only ever carry one passport when abroad, but it's critical in a lot of areas, that you use the same passport whenever crossing the boards of a particular country within the same visit.
No that's 100% wrong and provably so (see below). You absolutely have to carry all because there are situations where you'll legally need a mix.
Using my example: South African and EU passport. Suppose I'm flying from SA to Spain.
Airline desk: They want the EU passport. Because they get screwed if they fly someone into the EU that has no right being there.
Outbound immigration desk: Has to be SA passport. It's 100% ILLEGAL for me to present the EU one here - under fine or imprisonment
Inbound in Spain: They'll want to see the EU one because the SA one doesn't have a suitable visa stamp.
My "I presented both" comment is based on an observation that generally playing open cards with officials will result in them selecting the most favourable one. e.g. Iceland won't tell a German "oh we see you also have an afghan passport so you can't enter". Plus I like to play open cards. I have nothing to hide. You want to check both passports...go for it.
Two reasons: Internationally if you do this the official will (normally) pick the most favorable/least paperwork one.
For transparency - I have nothing to hide & wanted to play open cards. If he wants to run both through his systems that's cool - they'll both come back clean.
Me: Good morning sir. Here are my passports. My US ESTA Visa for entry into the USA was issued on the German one.
Him: You can't have two passports.
Me: I have dual citizenship, hence two passports.
Him: No US law doesn't allow you to have two passports.
Me - thinking...oh fk...this guy isn't grasping that US citizenship law doesn't apply to all 7.5 billion people on the world. Do I argue with this idiot? Nope...read enough horror stories on HN about US border arbitrarily detentions. US border agents can clearly do whatever the fuck they want. Went with a fake sorry sir won't happen again.
Oh and this is for a white male in a business suit for a business meeting with a company that's on the HN frontpage on a fuckin German passport speaking perfect English. I dread to think what the experience is like for someone more ahem diverse.
Gov needs to decide. They can't penalize me for not being transparent (e.g. encrypting docs and refusing to hand over password at border) and at the same time punishing me for being transparent (like in this example).
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadhttps://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/styles/scale_1200w/...
The problem isn't the NRA's and gun owners staunch defense of the second amendment it's wondering why people aren't more inclined to defend the fourth amendment. Too many people accept the incremental abridgment of our constitutional protections because they seem "reasonable". Never looking forward to what the long term outcome will be.
Instead of being critical of the tenacity of how the second is defended, tenaciously defending the others would be a good use of energy. Every protection should be fought like the NRA fights gun control, but it's easier point and blame than build up.
NRA expenses $423 million ACLU budget $235 million
Considering only 43% of US households own guns, and 100% use the 4th amendment we can that there's a huge number of apathetic people for you to motivate instead of tearing down something else.
Go ahead and down vote because it's easier than reading the numbers and doing something. This is why we are in this problem.
Citation needed.
There's nothing condescending in my post, if you read it that way then it is a reflection of you and your perceptions.
It's a very simple point. You can point at others and whine that why do they have such staunch supporters, because all you can to is teardown, or you view as an incentive to motivate getting everyone more involved and passionate about defending all of the other freedoms with the same tenacity.
It's clear you fall in to the teardown ideology.
That's what is so great about the second amendment. We don't have to argue over how much abridgment is acceptable because the amendment itself prescribes how much abridgment is acceptable.
"shall not be infringed."
How's that Militia going? Got any nuclear weapons?
EG: You can't own fully automatic weapons manufactured after 1986. What this restriction does is create an [artificial] floor price on any fully auto stuff to deter casual purchase - to the point a completely ghetto MAC-10 costs like $8K-9K, but because it was made before 1986 it is good to go. (To be clear, as a multi-gun owner, I think this is a fair compromise between no regulations and no guns.)
Another: Unauthorized possession of a nuclear weapon is banned by multiple laws, not just one, for example. Also if your desire to attempt to possess or possess said nuclear weapon was coupled with the intent to use it, well, that's another felony layered on.
Not trying to be overly-pedantic, but when people say "will not be infringed" I translate that to mean handguns, shotguns, and rifles (up to semi-automatic). Anything beyond those definitions start getting into what I will concede are legitimate "weapons of war" (machine guns, explosives, biological weapons) which merits restriction.
In the US, anything bigger than a 50 caliber round is classified as a "destructive device". Also included in that categories are grenade launchers, artillery shells, and I believe technically nuclear weapons. Interestingly enough flamethrowers are not classified as destructive devices.
I think you have a very skewed view of the purpose of the 2nd Amendment. "Weapons of war" is exactly the sort of thing it should be protecting. Ban handguns? Fine (under the amendment) - no one uses those in war (minus epsilon). I wouldn't be happy with it, since they're rather useful for self defence, but I could at least see it being justified. But short barreled shotguns? Submachine guns? Assault rifles? Anti-materiel rifles and RPGs? MANPADS, mortars and artillery? All those should be perfectly fine and dandy under the 2nd amendment, as evidenced by the privately owned warships and cannon around the beginning of the 19th century.
Yes, this means that it's been infringed a hell of a lot. Which is part of why gun rights groups fight so hard - give a little more ground, and there might not be any more to fall back to.
I have tangible reasons why I believe that fully automatic weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, and nuclear weapons should NOT be legal for civilian ownership in most cases (am open to someone appealing or stating their case -- eg I'm a weapons creator and wish to create weapons for the state).
As for why I think that the 2nd Amendment was intended to cover weapons of war - all the weapons of war - it was written following a successful revolution against an oppressive government, made possible by individuals already owning their own weapons. Oh, and Britain had tried to confiscate those, too. Yes, they wouldn't have anticipated the ABCs of strategic weaponry and perhaps those would be excluded, but almost anything below that has analogues in the 1700s. (And lumping automatic weapons in with atomic, biological and chemical weapons is kinda murder, arson and jaywalking IMO)
There are tons of people who have their rights violated every day and are given unjust sentences across the nation. The only remedy is probably the second amendment.
But then so many people turn around and say that they're fine with rights they don't like being infringed...
Thanks, that did make it a lot easier. whew, glad I didn't have to read all of that.
Does anyone know if/how this applies to international airports(as is the case in this story) , and/or our coasts?
https://reason.com/2019/04/12/the-aclu-defends-the-rights-of...
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/20180621ACL...
That said, it isn't usually exercised... but that sort of makes it worse since any usages of their elevated powers can be applied arbitrarily and without consistency which, IMO, is intensely worrying in a country where incarceration rates by race are so wildly out of balance with population proportions.
Driving in Queens doesn't give CBP the ability to pull you over and rip apart your car. Picking up someone at JFK may give them the ability for them to do so on the way home.
A CBP officer could yank you out of your car on the cross bronx expressway and then search the vehicle top to bottom and your legal recourse would be to hope that CBP feels bad and reimburses you somehow, you would be owed no legal damages because it isn't illegal.
This isn't hyperbole, it's actually that ridiculous.
From the Congressional Research Service: (https://fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL31826.pdf, page 8)
> Under the “extended border search” doctrine, government officials may conduct a warrantless search beyond the border or its functional equivalent if (1) the government officials have a reasonable certainty that a border was crossed or there exists a “high degree of probability” that a border was crossed; (2) they also have reasonable certainty that no change in the object of the search has occurred between the time of the border crossing and the search; and (3) they have “reasonable suspicion” that criminal activity was occurring.
In online reporting, there is often significant confusion between the "Extended Border Area" (ie. the 100 mile zone) and the "Functional Equivalent of the Border" (ie. an airport customs zone).
The only new thing is the increased size of the sprawling bureaucracy of Customs and the Border Control, and the increased tempo of operations.
The real problem is the growth of executive power and the supine nature of the Congress and courts. This particular issue has attention due to the disgusting conduct of the current administration. We live in an era where the President believes that he posses banana republic like presidential immunity and executive privilege.
These are just indiscriminate sweeps being justified by the 100 mile border exception.
That’s why if the cops are violating your rights, you follow up in court.
It’s a specific exception they are claiming, and I think most people feel that exception is being claimed too broadly.
It’s not a “constitution free zone.” Most of the constitution obviously and clearly still applies.
On the other hand, I think the headline and the tone of the article definitely want me to judge this as "bad" on the part of the border patrol. Indeed, I strongly believe in personal privacy and due process.
However, there is a fact buried in the article that makes this a non-routine pickup indeed:
"""He was asked for his identification in order to pay the small duty fee for his daughter’s gifts, and only then realized that he’d left his wallet at home. When he explained this, that he’d made an honest mistake and wanted only to pay the routine duty owed and depart, he was told that in fact he wasn’t permitted to leave."""
So again, I agree in general that the privacy protections afforded to U.S. citizens are very important; but, I am not so surprised after reading this that things went sideways.
It seems to me, many government agencies and employees are used to things going a certain way, and as soon as something unexpected happens, they clamp down and things can get a lot more serious.
A few years ago I was flying domestically between two states, and the fancy bomb detection thing flagged me. Of course, I wasn't carrying anything remotely explosive. Nonetheless, I was taken to a back room with a supervisor and two regular homeland security agents. I was told this time they would search my bag and scan me again. If it came back negative, I would be free to go. If it came back positive, they would conduct a strip search. Thankfully, it came back negative.
I nearly missed my flight, it was incredibly terrifying in the moment, but I didn't feel like my rights were violated. According to the agents, the most likely cause was that I had used hand sanitizer prior to getting in the security line.
Back to the article -- personally, I'm very interested in the results of the court proceedings, but unclear how to keep track of them.
In the 100 mile zone, they definitely have to have a defensible "reasonable suspicion" of criminal activity before they can stop & search someone.
Edit: Ha! The truth, as ever, ain't too popular.
This article mentions an instance where they colluded with local LE to harass citizens near a marijuana festival. Also deportable arrests are abysmally low, whereas their drug related arrests are absurdly high. It really sounds like they're a branch of DEA.
This guy wasn't traveling, and therefore had zero legal requirement to produce ID.
By your own metric, he required ID, because he drove to the border patrol station.
Which he knew he needed his ID for, because he had done so many times before.
The point I am making is simply that it is not so surprising to me that when things go outside of the normal process, things may go sideways when dealing with potentially hostile government agents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_Unit...
If the US government doesn't generally need sovereign immunity then it should be forced to surrender the right to exercise it or it'll be used in the worst way the first way.
I guess they could reverse that decision.
I disagree. I go to the airport (a border crossing) regularly to pick people up or drop people off and I definitely do not expect to be detained while they figure out who I am.
It also sounds like he ended up talking to the same people that process people actually crossing which makes this even more tricky.
I disagree. It's pretty clear that if you're outside the secure area through which those who arrive from the other country are herded, it's not at all tricky. The fact that the person he was talking to sometimes does the passport checking seems irrelevant.
This did not take place at an Airport, but rather, a Canadian/US border patrol station where according to someone else in this thread, a bus stop for border crossing exists.
It seems entirely reasonable to me that those agents are more vigilant against "I totally forgot my ID at home".
I maintain that simply being at a border crossing should not be grounds for detaining, but I do recognise that while a competent border crossing would make it impossible for someone to simply walk into the sterile "crossing zone" (and in airports such zones are usually pretty solid), this is not exactly a department known for competency.
Edit: Now that I consider it, it would seem really incompetent to just not notice which direction someone came from. This would allow people to cross the border all day with impunity. Pure speculation, but I bet they knew exactly which way he came from; they just felt like hassling some muslim looking guy without ID because they could (although I recognise that in the US, carrying a driving license everywhere seems to be a weird cultural phenomenon).
“Muslim looking guy” (what does that even mean?)
You don't have to agree with it to know what a "muslim looking guy" means. It means "someone whose looks Arabic or Persian, possibly with a beard". That's what it means. It's wrong, and it's prejudical, and in a strictly literal sense the words are inherently nonsensical, but that's what it means. I think you knew that already and for some passive-aggressive reason you're pretending you didn't.
Perhaps less "weird cultural phenomenon" and more "it's about the same size as a credit card", plus "it's probably the only broadly accepted government-issued ID you've got, so there's a variety of things things you might need it for, some of which you might not expect when you leave the house", resulting in "just leave it in your wallet or your handbag or wherever you carry such things".
If you're already generally leaving it with all the other miscellany you carry by default, it'd be more effort and more risk to take it out whenever you don't think you'd need it than to just leave it in your wallet/bag. If you're going to buy something, generally you'd have your wallet.
How do you handle such things, then? Honestly curious.
My wallet is quite small, I will say; I just have a rubber band around a couple of credit cards and potentially some folded banknotes, so I don't carry general "miscellany". I may be an outlier; if I'm going out to the shops or the gym or some such, I'll also leave my phone at home.
Yeah no. That's not how border crossings work at all.
It would be pretty embarrassing if people going in, going out, and those who are there to visit the customs office weren't kept separate.
But then I'm only assuming that border crossings in the US work the same way as border crossings elsewhere. Maybe they're a clown fiesta instead. Who knows.
Kinda looks like you ignored the preceding sentence to look snarky.
Border agents should know which side they're facing and which direction those people are traveling in. If they're not, they're incompetent.
There's also a u-turn to return to America without passing Canadian customs on the Canada side, but you're going to still have to explain to the Americans why you're crossing. My money is on this being how it happened.
All of that aside, thinking about it more, it's kind of weird that they'd even ask him to go to the peace bridge to begin with instead of any other CBP point in the area
The border search exception says that proximity to a border is inherently justification to search people without a warrant or probable cause, so the position of the Supreme Court is that agents don't have the normal burden of evidence for such actions. US v. Martinez-Fuerte went further and held that drivers can be directed to secondary screening without even reasonable suspicion.
The article is accurate but misleading when it discusses the conditions for these searches. (For instance, "calls into question whether the man, who is Muslim, was singled out because of his faith", "the border search exception is grounded in traversal of the border itself".) It's true that this raises questions about whether profiling was used, but the implicit "which is illegal" is false: the border search caselaw explicitly permits otherwise-illegal ethnic profiling. And "grounded in traversal" does not mean "pursuant to evidence of traversal": once again, Martinez suggests that searches to check whether someone has crossed are legal. Even "accumulated occupational biases" are a search rationale as 'training' and 'professional experience'.
There are a number of reasons this search still appears illegal, and the counsels interviewed for the story are understandably dubious But the boundaries of what's legal here extend well past what I find horrifying: searching people at the border without proof, explicitly on the basis of institutional opinions and racial profiling, has been upheld as legal.
More concretely, this idea of a 100 mile "exception" is utter nonsense, especially with significant population living within that area. But the Supreme Court identified with the power-desire to carry out such searches, and so performed enough logical gymnastics to create a plausible justification. And while its dubious conclusions certainly affect the practical ability of its victims to obtain straightforward justice, We The People should certainly not buy into their claims as universal when weighing whether The Government has run aground of its charter.
There is a big difference between going to an airport and passing through a secure area at that airport. He didn't try to cross the border.
Wait why are two cellphones suspicious? Work and personal phones are super common
> This time, however, when he arrived at the bridge office as instructed, carrying a handwritten note from the original customs office, the man, a U.S. citizen, was detained and searched by Customs and Border Protection, he said. His phones were seized and his car rifled through. His father and cousin, who had been waiting in the vehicle, were themselves detained, ordered into the office to answer questions about their national backgrounds.
The fact that the man is a US citizen is interposed into an otherwise chronological narrative to make the reader evaluate the reasonableness of the border agents’ actions against information the border agents do not have.
How would borders work if CBP was simply required to accept people’s unsubstantiated assertion that they were citizens who just forgot their ID?
The perspective of when CBP could prove this to themselves is irrelevant if they didn't have a cause to detain in the first place.
Hold on. Nobody objects to citizens having to show identification or risk detention when crossing the border. The issue is that the man wasn't crossing the border.
Borders would work just fine if CBP could only require identification at the border. In fact, I suspect if you were to poll Americans, most probably think that this is already the case. That's why this was an issue to begin with: presumably if the man had known he was going to be detained if he didn't bring his ID, he would have done that.
It's like if you went to the DMV to take a driving test, having forgotten your ID at home, and instead of telling you to come back with your ID the DMV staff took you into custody. You'd be pretty outraged, citizen or not.
No they wouldn't. In many cases it's impossible to put a border checkpoint at the literal border. That's why they're often at choke points in the transportation system near borders.
I think there's a reasonable debate to be had about whether those choke points should be on highways dozens of miles from the literal border. That's not the situation here.
> In fact, I suspect if you were to poll Americans, most probably think that this is already the case. That's why this was an issue to begin with: presumably if the man had known he was going to be detained if he didn't bring his ID, he would have done that.
How people expect border crossings to work has no relevance. The question is what is an "unreasonable" search and seizure under the fourth amendment. The Constitution uses the fuzzy term "unreasonable" precisely because it acknowledges the legitimate need of the government to search and detain people without a warrant. Effectuating the nation's sovereign right to control its borders is one of those reasons. A rigid mechanical rule that only permits searches of people as they cross the literal border cannot be reconciled with the much more--well, reasonable--language the fourth amendment uses.
The fact that nobody expects to be detained for the equivalent of a DMV trip is a good indication that this was "unreasonable" per the plain meaning of the word. Maybe case law says otherwise. But ask a "reasonable" person on the street what the appropriate response of a customs agent to someone (citizen or not) who forgot their ID to take care of some bureaucratic hurdle on a package is, especially when the agency was supposed to be aware of the person's arrival (note the mention of the email in the article). That's what I care about.
I should mention, by the way, that the pedestrian lane at a US-Canada border crossing typically has a queue on the Canada side, and the border agent calls groups in one-by-one, just as at an airport. I have no idea how someone just trying to interact with customs, who drove up and parked their car on the US side, could be confused with someone trying to enter the US. It's worth looking at a map of the Peace Bridge [1]. This isn't a checkpoint some ways away from the border; it's a road with one way into the US, through the checkpoint (and the Niagara River in between the two countries!) Unless you have a flying car, there is no way you could end up with a car on the US side without having already gone through border security. The incompetence itself is ridiculous.
[1]: https://goo.gl/maps/PTm1xCv6aEEaGpWY9
That part doesn’t make sense.
I’m thinking he wanted to avoid brokerage charges by brokering himself, and needed paperwork from DHL to be signed by customs.
To rewrite it as you suggest is to impose a CBP perspective, and that post-facto justification seems much more biased than what is written.
All that said, I think it's quite reasonable to favor the viewpoints of the dis-empowered, as the opposite approach would serve to reinforce any existing tyranny. The government is a large organization that has quite a lot of resources at it's fingertips - a private citizen... not so much.
And now an annoying aside. I really wish the ACLU was sincere in fighting this but they won't get any more of my money. I used to support the ACLU because these were the types of P1 issues they would battle. It seems in the last years it's faded to more social justice platform. Fine for them if that's what they believe are the most pressing issues of our time, but not my P1 constitutional concerns.
What's the point of anything if the government can railroad your 1st and 4th amendment rights? Are there good alternatives to the ACLU of yore?
Yeah no. Last time I had to go for work was quite unpleasant too.
The border agent was a complete moron and on a power trip. Kept going on about how American citizenship law doesn’t allow dual nationality. So no sir you can’t have two passports. Which I’m pretty sure is bullshit but I’m not gonna argue with a border agent. Was really hoping that he’d be bright enough to grasp that neither of the two passports he’s holding is bloody American though.
I'd directly link you but can't see a way to do so on hn
No that's 100% wrong and provably so (see below). You absolutely have to carry all because there are situations where you'll legally need a mix.
Using my example: South African and EU passport. Suppose I'm flying from SA to Spain.
Airline desk: They want the EU passport. Because they get screwed if they fly someone into the EU that has no right being there.
Outbound immigration desk: Has to be SA passport. It's 100% ILLEGAL for me to present the EU one here - under fine or imprisonment
Inbound in Spain: They'll want to see the EU one because the SA one doesn't have a suitable visa stamp.
My "I presented both" comment is based on an observation that generally playing open cards with officials will result in them selecting the most favourable one. e.g. Iceland won't tell a German "oh we see you also have an afghan passport so you can't enter". Plus I like to play open cards. I have nothing to hide. You want to check both passports...go for it.
Two reasons: Internationally if you do this the official will (normally) pick the most favorable/least paperwork one.
For transparency - I have nothing to hide & wanted to play open cards. If he wants to run both through his systems that's cool - they'll both come back clean.
Me: Good morning sir. Here are my passports. My US ESTA Visa for entry into the USA was issued on the German one.
Him: You can't have two passports.
Me: I have dual citizenship, hence two passports.
Him: No US law doesn't allow you to have two passports.
Me - thinking...oh fk...this guy isn't grasping that US citizenship law doesn't apply to all 7.5 billion people on the world. Do I argue with this idiot? Nope...read enough horror stories on HN about US border arbitrarily detentions. US border agents can clearly do whatever the fuck they want. Went with a fake sorry sir won't happen again.
Oh and this is for a white male in a business suit for a business meeting with a company that's on the HN frontpage on a fuckin German passport speaking perfect English. I dread to think what the experience is like for someone more ahem diverse.
Yeah, don’t do that. When interacting with the government, you give them what they need and no more.
Sounds like you got a really stupid CBP agent.
Gov needs to decide. They can't penalize me for not being transparent (e.g. encrypting docs and refusing to hand over password at border) and at the same time punishing me for being transparent (like in this example).
Fuckin decide what you want....