UALOneKPlus

I was driving on Highway 8, from Yuma to San Diego, and encountered the US Border patrol between Yuma and San Diego.

The first Border Patrol check point from Yuma heading to San Diego was relatively mundane.

When I encountered the second US Border Patrol in the mountains by San Diego, it was very noteworthy. The check point was set up to merge two traffic lanes into a single lane, and the traffic had backed up significantly in the middle of nowhere, in this border patrol check point location.

When I made it to the border patrol agent, I saw that he had waved pretty much everyone through. When I drove up, he waved me to the right, the secondary check area. I drove over to the right, and then 3-4 Border Patrol agents who were sitting around idly came up to my car, and asked if I was a US Citizen, to which I responded "yes".

Then one of the agents asked if they could look at my luggage. I couldn't believe what was being asked, so I asked him "you want to search my luggage?", to which he replied "yes".

At this point I immediately said "no, you may not look at my luggage." He looked very surprised, and said "we can't look at your luggage?" I affirmed this by saying "no, you may not look at my luggage."

He looked very disturbed, barked something into his walkie talkie. Then he called up a border patrol agent with a K-9 dog, who walked all around my car. The dog found nothing of course, as I am a law abiding US Citizen. The border patrol agent finally relented and let me on my way.

I was extremely disturbed by this encounter. First of all, I am a US Citizen traveling from one US city to another, one US state to another. To have to stop at numerous border patrol checkpoints to affirm that I am a US citizen, and have them look over my car, doesn't feel like it's the right thing to do to US citizens traveling lawfully within our borders.

Secondly, they had no probable cause to delay my travel to the secondary check point. And they absolutely had no right to look at my luggage or do any type of search, as I had done nothing that warranted any suspicion of any type from any law enforcement agency.

I am not hispanic, speak English as a native. But even if I was hispanic, and spoke English with an accent, what does it matter if I was lawfully traveling within the US as a citizen?

I wonder how many people blindly obey and say "yes" when asked if their luggage and belongings could be searched. This does not seem right at all, to treat law abiding US citizens as criminals with check points, secondary checkpoints, requests to search luggage that could be construed as a threat if you do not comply.

alanR

“We Had To Destroy Freedom In Order To Save It”

DAL4550

As a former LEO, I know that most people will automatically say 'yes' to having a search done when asked. Good for you for saying 'No'. The whole 'I have nothing to hide so search me' idiocy is repugnant. You have the right to be secure in your personal belongings. Anything in the open in something else all together. You are certainly within your rights to say no. I am glad you had the integrity to do so.

Bungnoid

You're lucky that the K-9 handler didn't just say that the dog "alerted" on something, which would have been legal grounds for a search.

stifle

Just another dragnet

Props to the OP for declining consent to search.

DAL4550

If the dog alerted the handler to a problem, that's a different story. Then there is a clearly articulate reason for a search. Fishing for something is not.

MrHalliday

This hardly seems like something remarkable.
It has been this way for decades.

Bungnoid

I read about a study recently where it was reported that the dogs actually look to their handlers for cues--the dogs are trying to read the handlers' wishes and give them what they want. That being the case, it would be trivial for an unscrupulous handler to fabricate an alert.

Furthermore, is there a standard alert that the dogs are trained to make? What is it? Would a civilian recognize it? If the handler tells you that the dog alerted, but you didn't notice anything, what do you do? Dispute the claim?

The point is that the K-9 thing is a farce, because the handlers can generate an alert and get their search if they are so inclined.

DAL4550

A dog will let you know clearly when they find a prohibited item. It would be a sad state of affairs if handlers would taint the dogs abilities by feigning false positives. Unfortunately, you are correct. Most people wouldn't know how a dog reacts to finding contraband.

nrr

I am an ACLU member; if I were in the same situation as OP, and refused the search--would showing the CBP person my membership card provoke him more or would he be more tolerant of my refusal.

neko

Faking a positive is simple malfeasance. I think the study bungnoid refers to is much more subtle.

IIRC, it was an exercise searching for explosives in a building. When the experimenters put up signs saying where the target and false positives (meat) were located, it significantly affected the dogs' detection ability, even though dogs obviously can't read and their handlers can. That is, the handlers were (unintentionally) cuing the dogs.

This doesn't necessarily make K-9 a farce - it may mean that part of what the dogs do is to amplify the handler's intelligence and intuition about searching for hidden explosives.

The problem is that this leads to gray areas, where a dog might be cued by a handler's "knowledge" that some individual or ethnic group etc, is a problem. The point is that a K-9 isn't a totally objective mechanical object and its responses may reflect -- even unintentionally -- the racial or other prejudices of its handler.

MaximumSisu

What happened to the vaunted, BDO-like superskills our resident CBP officer asserts his officers have? This must have been their only miscue of the day.

Mientree

Personally (but IANAL), it seems to me the k-9 aspect was a search / fishing expedition.

I do recognize that the courts have given leeway on stops like these; however, am I to presume that they allowed the dog to search simply because the OP only said no to a search of their luggage - and not the car? i.e. They took the absence of a refusal to be an approval - even though the question was never asked?

Mientree

Intentional false positive selection to show they don't racially discriminate?

MaximumSisu

While I'm sure they do intentionally stop a number of people to pad their stats trying to preclude racial discrimination charges, the plain fact is that a referral to secondary, either at a suspicion-less checkpoint or at a border is statistically less accurate at producing evidence of a crime than is a coin toss.