The Terrible Power of U.S. Border Officials They Violated My Rights

And, indeed, harass. With impunity.

That is not in fact true, and was in fact litigated in front of the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, 3/4 of the Internet believes it to be true because the ACLU fundraises on that claim.

We cannot count on them.

Donating money and time to them helps, but to actually fix things takes regime change, which they don't get involved in. We each have to do that.

no. You don't get it. You literally have no rights with these unconstitutional cops. Wait until you personally experience this sort of thing, as you seem to think that the author "deserved" it. The more I think about it, the more disgusted I am by your comment. I find it highly deliberately ignorant, as if you are directly ignoring the entire point of this story. If a US citizen is not allowed into the USA, where could they possibly be deported to LOL? Constitutional rights? All this from an agency that sounds like something from the 3rd Reich, and created under Bush Jr. Highly unconstitutional, and vested with impunity. Wrongful

Sure, complying is generally prudent to not anger criminals. The point is that cops/agents who do act this way are ultimately exceeding their authority, and should be prosecuted as any other violent criminal.

If an officer does not have the restraint to avoid adding their own ego to a situation, they have no business wearing a uniform.

Police should be the single class of human beings for which this is not true.

It astounds me that an article about government officials going on an unwarranted fishing expedition through a journalist's entire digital life would be flagged on HN.

Particularly when previous stories of CBP demanding access to tech workers' devices have been heavily upvoted in the past.

My guess is that the flaggers reacted purely to the headline, and never read the story. The headline pattern matches to "culture war", so they flagged it and moved on.

> Trump seating in the oval office has nothing to do with how CBP is behaving.

Highly doubtful. Practically as soon as the Trump administration came in, they fired the outsider police- and FBI veteran that the Obama administration had brought on to head up the CBP and change its insular- and overly-confrontational culture. The fired outsider was strongly opposed by the border-guards union, which, surprise, had prominently endorsed Trump's candidacy because of his emphasis on border security during the campaign. [0]

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/borde... (scan down toward the end of the article)

While it is correct that none of the administrations since 2001 has improved anything in this regard, under Trump things are definitely not becoming better. Those who are telling us "but only illegal immigrants suffer", are wrong -- everybody is having it much worse, illegal immigrants (who are people too, and most of them are not doing anything wrong), legal immigrants (waiting times and quotas are getting nearly impassable), and American citizens, who have their rights violated.

Some of the Americans still think that most of these things are good, they think that all immigration is intrinsically bad for America, and perhaps they voted for Trump because of that. I, of course, do not agree (as an immigrant myself, from Russia to Switzerland), but as American voters, it is up to them to decide, this is a valid point to start the discussion -- as long as the truth is acknowledged, and not hidden behind statements like "it's only about illegal immigrants".

> Do people really think that voting democrat in a few years will change anything?

It is the Trump administration, which is responsible how CBP is behaving now.

When Obama was in power, it was the Obama administration's responsibility.

How would you name the current administration, so it isn't about party politics?

Each team does represent different entrenched interests, and so the results of an election will affect which agencies get worse. Given his focus on marketing "border security" (read: build a wall to keep us in), associating this specific tooth in the totalitarian ratchet to Trump is justified.

The equivalence is that it's foolish to be goaded into voting support for the blue team by this specific outrage. A change in team won't reform the long term rot of these particular thugs, but rather just direct the lucrative decay onto other aspects of society.

But there's one thing about this story: "It happened 33,295 times last year."

So, while it happened to this journalist and he reported on it, the 32k other people did not report on it.

So, maybe turn this around a bit: maybe the CBP should understand if they do it to a journalist, he might report on it.

Also, maybe CPB is just doing their jobs and journalists shouldn't get better treatment, but remember they ARE one of the checks and balances on unchecked power/authority/corruption in any government. Other governments know this and journalists are ruthlessly hunted in other countries.