> the freedoms the United States guarantees
I might be wrong, but I thought you didn't have any rights or freedoms at the border?
I might be wrong, but I thought you didn't have any rights or freedoms at the border?
The feds assert a bullshit 100-mile zone, but that is covers a tremendous swath of the country (and a huge % of citizens), and is untested jurisprudence.
I'm a bit surprised they don't also count everywhere within 100 mi of the doors into the international terminals of every international airport. If you're going to set an arbitrary limit without legislative oversight, why not set it in a way that maximizes your agency's own power?
What's magical about 100 miles, anyway? It seems very suspiciously based on a power of ten of a specific unit of measure, and not on any real distance that may be supported by statistics or analysis. I'd say draw the line where you have a 95% certainty that any persons encountered on the border side of it just crossed over. Which is to say that the border patrol would have to stay on the border side of any major highway, and would need to pay attention to where the boats come and go.
So's all of Seattle, as the entire coastline is deemed to be "border" as well.
1. https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
> According to the government, however, these basic constitutional principles do not apply fully at our borders. For example, at border crossings (also called "ports of entry"), federal authorities do not need a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing to justify conducting what courts have called a "routine search," such as searching luggage or a vehicle.
https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
the border patrol checkpoint where San Diego county ends and Riverside county begins is around 60 miles from the border
We all know how easy PC is to manufacture though.
Not according to the Supreme Court, no.
Border searches in the US have never required probable cause.
Who's wrong, you or the ACLU?
[0]https://www.acluaz.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/a...
Which as a thought experiment shows that the 100 miles is not the real problem; a great deal of hassle can occur even if checks were limited to a single mile from the border.
without individualized criminal suspicion, the off-site search of an electronic device taken at a border is unconstitutional. No such suspicion of ongoing or imminent criminal activity existed in the case of Ms. Lazoja giving rise to reasonable suspicion to search and seize her property. Consequently, neither was there probable cause, nor a warrant. Therefore, the search and seizure of Ms. Lazoja’s property violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment.
To make this argument, the motion mentions some precedent. Most notably was United States v. Kim (page 12):
In Kim, where DHS agents seized a laptop computer at Los Angeles International Airport and later sent it to a laboratory to be copied and searched, the district court found that the lengthy post-seizure retention of a laptop at a second site, outside the airport, “did not possess the characteristics of a border search or other regular inspection procedures,” and that it “more resembled the common nonborder search based on individualized suspicion, which must be prefaced by the usual warrant and probable cause standards.” Id. at 58 (citing United States v. Brennan, 538 F.2d 711, 716 (5th Cir. 1976)). The court in Kim questioned whether the seizure and imaging of a laptop at the border “can accurately be characterized as a border search at all.”
And furthermore that doing so for a cell-phone is particularly egregious; recent supreme court cases strengthen the argument that if we're going to protect laptops then we certainly need to protect cellphones (page 13):
The Supreme Court recently expanded the categorically heightened privacy interests in data located on cell phones, specifically addressing cell phones’ location data.
The motion also makes auxiliary arguments about retention and duration: even if the border search was constitutional, shipping the device off to a lab was not constitutional without a warrant. And even if shipping the device to a lab was constitutional, retaining it for so long was not constitutional. And even if retaining the device for so long was constitutional, retaining the data indefinitely is not constitutional. At least, not without warrants.
Another question is when a non-citizen officially becomes a "US person" with full constitutional rights. If that person never leaves the 100 mile radius, are they never a US person?
US citizens cannot ultimately be denied entry. US customers and border can seize property(from US citizens) and later make a determination as to whether it should be returned. Abuse by those in power does happen, but in the vast majority of cases where property is allegedly wrongfully seized there is more to the story than is reported to the press initially.