US Border Patrol checkpoint on I-10 in west Texas
#76
Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 1,347
As for nervousness, the officers deal with and talk to numerous people everyday. The officer expects a certain amount of nervousness from the individuals they are dealing with. It just comes with the uniform and the situation. Excessive nervousness or the lack of any nervousness at all stands out. Obviously, it is not a 100 percent indicator, that is why it is only part of the whole picture.
FB
#77
Join Date: Dec 2007
Programs: DL, WN, US, Avis, AA
Posts: 662
I am not sure if this was directed at me but I missed it either way. Taking for granted the officer doesn't see anything associated with the vehicle. You are cool as a cucumber (not nervous etc) you are free to go. The officer may still ask the question concerning your citizenship even if you offered it in the greeting without being asked.
FB
FB
#78
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Chicago
Posts: 11,509
I am not sure if this was directed at me but I missed it either way. Taking for granted the officer doesn't see anything associated with the vehicle. You are cool as a cucumber (not nervous etc) you are free to go. The officer may still ask the question concerning your citizenship even if you offered it in the greeting without being asked.
FB
FB
http://www.youtube.com/user/Checkpoi.../0/DDLlEh0x2XA
Is what happened here legal? After the "we know who you are" what was the cause for the continued detention? Was Agent Soto correct that he was not free to leave until he answered the citizenship question?
#79
Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 1,347
Please watch the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Checkpoi.../0/DDLlEh0x2XA
Is what happened here legal? After the "we know who you are" what was the cause for the continued detention? Was Agent Soto correct that he was not free to leave until he answered the citizenship question?
http://www.youtube.com/user/Checkpoi.../0/DDLlEh0x2XA
Is what happened here legal? After the "we know who you are" what was the cause for the continued detention? Was Agent Soto correct that he was not free to leave until he answered the citizenship question?
FB
#80
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: ORD
Programs: AA Platinum, HHonors Diamond
Posts: 1,177
This is becoming like the TSA domestic ID checks. TSA: You must have ID to fly domestically. If you don't, we cannot stop you, but we'll make it difficult for you, even if we have no authority to do so.
Border Police: You must answer my question on citizenship. You don't actually have to answer, but we'll try like hell to make you think you do.
The real issue for me, is that I would have no problem answering a question, in theory, even if I were not required to do it. The problem is that doing so gives the government tacit cooperation to encroach more and more. If all it really were, "Are you a US Citizen?" then, so be it; I'm very proud to tell it to anyone who will listen.
We all know, however, that this is not really it. The question is just a way for the police to gain access for a fishing expedition, which I would be fine with if they always caught criminals, and never inconvenienced innocents. Since this doesn't happen, if we must let criminals by, once in a while, to protect the rights of the innocent. I'm okay with that. The contrapositive is a much, much, worse outcome.
Border Police: You must answer my question on citizenship. You don't actually have to answer, but we'll try like hell to make you think you do.
The real issue for me, is that I would have no problem answering a question, in theory, even if I were not required to do it. The problem is that doing so gives the government tacit cooperation to encroach more and more. If all it really were, "Are you a US Citizen?" then, so be it; I'm very proud to tell it to anyone who will listen.
We all know, however, that this is not really it. The question is just a way for the police to gain access for a fishing expedition, which I would be fine with if they always caught criminals, and never inconvenienced innocents. Since this doesn't happen, if we must let criminals by, once in a while, to protect the rights of the innocent. I'm okay with that. The contrapositive is a much, much, worse outcome.
#81
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Upstate NY
Programs: IHG Plat, HH Gold, EZ Pass Plat, Starbucks Gold, Whatever flight is cheapest
Posts: 7,035
This type of thing isn't confined to the southern border. Happens up north too. Saw one of these over on the southbound side of I-87 heading towards Lake Placid, NY and then got stopped at a different one on some country backroad heading SW out of Lake Placid towards Utica.
#82
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Chicago
Posts: 11,509
#83
Join Date: May 2010
Location: FLL - Nice and Warm
Programs: TSA Disparager Gold
Posts: 1,025
Is New York the Next "Papers Please" State?
#84
Join Date: Jul 2005
Programs: Still trying to use my Continental OnePass miles...
Posts: 171
Does anyone know what the scanners are that are set up on the side of the road approx 2500 feet from the checkpoint?
It appears to be a set of 3-6 cameras, lights, a small flat-faced square emitter, cabling, and a small metal storage box. They are set up on either side of the road so that you must drive thorough them.
I would like more information regarding this contraption.
It appears to be a set of 3-6 cameras, lights, a small flat-faced square emitter, cabling, and a small metal storage box. They are set up on either side of the road so that you must drive thorough them.
I would like more information regarding this contraption.
#85
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: An NPR mind living in a Fox News world
Posts: 14,153
Does anyone know what the scanners are that are set up on the side of the road approx 2500 feet from the checkpoint?
It appears to be a set of 3-6 cameras, lights, a small flat-faced square emitter, cabling, and a small metal storage box. They are set up on either side of the road so that you must drive thorough them.
I would like more information regarding this contraption.
It appears to be a set of 3-6 cameras, lights, a small flat-faced square emitter, cabling, and a small metal storage box. They are set up on either side of the road so that you must drive thorough them.
I would like more information regarding this contraption.
Plan B is: Can you post the approximate location? Is there a town nearby or a milemarker for the checkpoint? If the satellite imagery on Google Earth or commercial imagery web sites are current, I might be able to find it and do some "Imagery Analyst" work (wow -- what a nostalgia trip! Maybe I'll have to use a light table!)
#86
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: DFW
Posts: 28,010
#87
Join Date: Jul 2005
Programs: Still trying to use my Continental OnePass miles...
Posts: 171
Is there any possibility that you can take a picture the next time you go through it?
Plan B is: Can you post the approximate location? Is there a town nearby or a milemarker for the checkpoint? If the satellite imagery on Google Earth or commercial imagery web sites are current, I might be able to find it and do some "Imagery Analyst" work (wow -- what a nostalgia trip! Maybe I'll have to use a light table!)
Plan B is: Can you post the approximate location? Is there a town nearby or a milemarker for the checkpoint? If the satellite imagery on Google Earth or commercial imagery web sites are current, I might be able to find it and do some "Imagery Analyst" work (wow -- what a nostalgia trip! Maybe I'll have to use a light table!)
I won't be going through it any time soon. I think it might be a backscatter machine. Something like this:
http://borderbeat.net/news/638-borde...ive-by-scanner
All cars were forced to drive though it though. I called the El Paso sector of the Border Patrol and asked them what it was and they told me they couldn't say. I am now experiencing a run around with CPB with no one wanting to answer my questions.
#88
Suspended
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#89
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Central Texas
Programs: Many, slipping beneath the horizon
Posts: 9,859
We came through the IH10 checkpoint Tuesday Noon... Long line, 20+, of cars with some delays (and one car pulled over for a search). The light & scanner set up seems likely to be directed at some sort of scan of truck trailers. When our turn came, we would have been quickly through (only a single question, "US citizens?") but our pair of jack Russell's took great offense to the drug dog's walk around. he was well-behaved, but mine were anxious to meet and greet (loudly, aggressively wanting to play as Jack Russell's do), so we were delayed for a brief encounter session and some conversation with the handler (who admitted that he suspected that a good smuggler ought to carry along Jack Russells with their capacity to divert his dog from the principal mission). He wouldn't tell me if his was the dog that had caught Willie Nelson's bus and the MJ aboard.
The Sierra Blanca check point has been there for years, stuck out in the boonies (some of the harshest landscape in the US with no opportunity or roads upon which to circumvent it), where IH10 is no longer within easy walking distance from the Rio Grande/Bravo, a bottleneck for coyotes hauling illegals and the mules who move drogas. For those of us who spend or have spent much time in "Far West Texas" it's a familiar impedance/annoyance/occasional convenience. I worry more about the 110 miles from Fort Stockton to Ozona, only a couple of old "filling stations" a few miles from Fort Stockton, then nearly 100 miles, no gas, nothing but a few gas/oil facilities and ranch gates, no noticeable habitations, a bad place to run out of gas or breakdown, broken only by the tumbled canyons of the Pecos Crossing, crumbling old Fort Lancaster, and the few inhabitants of Sheffield, a few miles off the Interstate.
After the bright lights of El Paso, Sierra Blanca's about the only respite until you get to Fort Stockton, "Motel City", parking lots filled with the heavy duty company pickups of the oil & gas professionals. The site of a mesa top filled with big wind generators looming above dry canyons lined with pump jacks, Christmas trees (gas well heads) and rusting oil collection tanks makes an interesting illustration of the energy business. Nobody minds a few windmills and oil/gas wells in that desolate back yard. There's few to hear the sound of windmills windmilling (and not many birds to go 'splat" against their blades) or pump jacks pumping, only the occasional dead deer or critter, the victims of rash attempts to cross the Interstate.
The Sierra Blanca check point has been there for years, stuck out in the boonies (some of the harshest landscape in the US with no opportunity or roads upon which to circumvent it), where IH10 is no longer within easy walking distance from the Rio Grande/Bravo, a bottleneck for coyotes hauling illegals and the mules who move drogas. For those of us who spend or have spent much time in "Far West Texas" it's a familiar impedance/annoyance/occasional convenience. I worry more about the 110 miles from Fort Stockton to Ozona, only a couple of old "filling stations" a few miles from Fort Stockton, then nearly 100 miles, no gas, nothing but a few gas/oil facilities and ranch gates, no noticeable habitations, a bad place to run out of gas or breakdown, broken only by the tumbled canyons of the Pecos Crossing, crumbling old Fort Lancaster, and the few inhabitants of Sheffield, a few miles off the Interstate.
After the bright lights of El Paso, Sierra Blanca's about the only respite until you get to Fort Stockton, "Motel City", parking lots filled with the heavy duty company pickups of the oil & gas professionals. The site of a mesa top filled with big wind generators looming above dry canyons lined with pump jacks, Christmas trees (gas well heads) and rusting oil collection tanks makes an interesting illustration of the energy business. Nobody minds a few windmills and oil/gas wells in that desolate back yard. There's few to hear the sound of windmills windmilling (and not many birds to go 'splat" against their blades) or pump jacks pumping, only the occasional dead deer or critter, the victims of rash attempts to cross the Interstate.
#90
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Austin (TX)
Posts: 308
concur about it being there seemingly forever...first time I ever saw it in operation was sometime around 1995 or 1996. Was helping someone move from AZ and so I was in a big uHaul van with her blonde-blue-eyed daughter in the front seat as we roll in there around 2AM.
We got asked precisely one question- "are y'all American citizens." As I responded yes, we were waved on through.
Some of our quick wave might have been that the vehicle in front of us was not doing so well at following directions and was about to get a full content search as a result...
Still was very surprised that a moving van in the middle of the night was NOT subjected to at least a pull to the side and open the back sort of check...
We got asked precisely one question- "are y'all American citizens." As I responded yes, we were waved on through.
Some of our quick wave might have been that the vehicle in front of us was not doing so well at following directions and was about to get a full content search as a result...
Still was very surprised that a moving van in the middle of the night was NOT subjected to at least a pull to the side and open the back sort of check...