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Comment by fishywang | Hacker News Reader

Because all international airports are "borders", and previously the warranty-less searches were permitted with something like "within 50 miles of a border", the majority people living in the US should say thank fuck.

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I just replied to a sibling about the CBP's 100 mile zone (i'll post here again). For some reason, the airports do not seem to be mapped as part of this 100 "inclusion" zone. Otherwise, the included population would approach 100%. That's a bit of trivia I've never seen addressed before, so adding that to the list of things that make you go hmmm

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone

I'm not saying it's wrong or right, but this isn't not too surprising is it? Access out of an airport is tightly controlled whereas the border isn't.

It has never been the case that 100 (or 50) mile ranges from the border are open to warrantless searches; it's a myth spread by a misleading bit of ACLU promo material.

That’s not true. CBP has plenty of permanent and many more tactical search checkpoints throughout the country where you are subject to search. Many of these are 70+ miles from the border.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_...

They are allowed to stop people who have crossed the border at (often permanent) checkpoints many miles from the border. They can ask to search anybody! And within the ambit of their authority they can probably search with reasonable suspicion. It's not my claim that CBP can't search you anywhere but the actual border, but rather that the notion that everyone living within 100 (or 50 or 12 nmi or whatever) miles from the border is subject to constant CBP search.

If you check this in the search bar at the bottom of the page you'll see this has come up a bunch on HN (it's a lurid and exciting notion to toss around!) and there are SCOTUS cites in the results.

How is Chicago within this given no international border in Lake Michigan?

It's not!

In a comment of yours from 2019 you cited documents that apparently CBP thinks every Great Lake is a border. Is this still true?

Presumably that comment predates 'jcranmer setting me straight.

Maybe you should tell the border patrol.

https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1084?language=en_US

[O]nly insofar as they involve a minimally intrusive “brief detention of travelers” with a “routine and limited inquiry into residence status” that maintains an immigration focus. Any secondary inspection (not a search) must be “made for the sole purpose of conducting a routine and limited inquiry into residence status that cannot feasibly be made of every motorist where the traffic is heavy.” Further detention or questioning must be founded on reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. Vehicle searches beyond what can be seen via ordinary visual inspection are not permitted without probable cause or consent that has been provided knowingly and voluntarily and without coercion.

It is not my contention that CBP isn't abusing the law. I'm sure they are. Many CBP immigration stops apprehend no or single-digit unlawful immigrants while arresting dozens and dozens of citizens for things like suspected drug offenses. My contention --- well, not really mine so much as that of the Supreme Court and of law review articles about this case law --- is that what they're doing is plainly unlawful.

Probable cause stopped being a good-faith best effort and started being pro-forma beauracracy a long time ago, and courts regularly and reliably uphold this behavior. The only people who don't seem to understand this are law-text literalists. There's nothing illegal about what the CBP is doing; it's just shitty and unamerican. We're well into "the purpose of a system is what it does" territory here.

This is a message board trope in legal discussions. Either the law matters or the whole discussion is pointless; it's not a 100 mile zone, then, but a 1650 mile zone, because, after all, nobody is following the law anyways. That might even be the case! But if it is, we're not discussing anything meaningful here.

What is plainly the case is that many people believe that the law dictates that CBP can warrantlessly search citizens anywhere within 100 miles of the border (that border including the shores of all the Great Lakes). The law does not say that, the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that CBP can't do that, and people should stop repeating the claim that they can, because that claim empowers the CBP, which is already prone to abusing its authority.

But the bogus claim is head-turning, and presumably generates a lot of money for ACLU, because it's alarming and wrong-seeming (well, wrong, period, but...).

You're playing a semantics game. How is a mandatory check of your residence status not a search?

See upthread.

As I said before, the CBP believes they have legal authority for these searches, and they're performing them. All this bluster about the ACLU is irrelevant. These are the facts out here in the world, no matter what you say. Claiming they don't have the right is pointless noise, because everyone in a position to effect change agrees with them that they do. They even cite Supreme Court cases, just like you!

Really? Which Supreme Court cases would those be?

This confirms you didn't read the very first link I gave you. That confirmation discourages further participation in this discussion, since it's clear you're not actually interested in learning anything here.

Please don't spread misinformation about the ACLU. This is easily verified through google search. It dates back to 1952[1].

"The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 established that a "reasonable distance" of the border would extend "100-air miles" around the outline of the country. "

Update: addl reference [3]

[1] https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/13/what-is-usa-border-en...

[2] https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/fedreg/fr02...

[3] https://ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/border-patrol-100-...

See many other comments on this thread for the context that your comment misses.

From u/WillPostForFood's link:

"This longstanding recognition that searches at our borders without probable cause and without a warrant are nonetheless "reasonable" has a history as old as the Fourth Amendment itself."

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