FliesWay2Much

Yes -- especially the "Roadblock Revelations" tab. Use of the drug dog is apparently a new twist. Using these suspicionless checkpoints for anything other than a "brief immigration check" -- i.e.: a drug dog -- has already been challenged and thrown out when it's the state or local cops doing it (AZ, I think). It's only a matter of time (and lots more innocent victims) before it gets thrown out on a federal level. Use of a suspicionless checkpoint as a general law enforcement dragnet was thrown out years ago. I think that case was called "Edmund vs Indianapolis" or something like that.

The guy was asking you all those questions as a ruse to keep you there long enough for them to walk the drug dog around your car.

There was another case several years ago in which the Supremes laid out three criteria for establishing articulable reasonable suspicion good enough for them to conduct a more intrusive search beyond the "brief detention." One was that they had to establish that you had, in fact, crossed the international border on the current driving trip you were making when you were stopped at the checkpoint. The second criterion is that the trip was continuous from the border to the checkpoint. I forget the third criterion. A lot of these checkpoints are well north of major border cities, so there's no way any federal cops can prove that you had just crossed the border at El Paso and made one continuous trip that day all the way through El Paso to his checkpoint.

Since the courts have laid down some pretty stringent requirements, after you get past the discussion of whether or not these should even exist in the US, the only way for them to get you into a secondary intrusive search is for them to either get you to voluntarily disclose the information via intimidation or to keep pushing the envelope until somebody takes them to court. "Roadblock Revelations" is loaded with lots of additional information as well as videotaped encounters.

Personally, I'm tired of all these court cases required to reign in the executive branch. People bringing these cases do so at great personal risk (arrest, beatings, taser attacks, etc) and often at great financial cost.

In the interests of dialogue, I'd have to ask FB how your agency would run these checkpoints if you didn't have any of these constraints -- i.e.: a "perfect world" from a DHS perspective?