Hacker News Reader

Comment by stonogo | Hacker News Reader

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com