Originally Posted by
catocony
Yes they do. LAPD catches drug dealers all the time too. Should they go down to San Ysidro, sit a mile from the border and stop and search everyone walking down the street? It's all about jurisdiction. CBP has the border. Other agencies cover the US. The CBP has decided that the border isn't really the border, it's an invisible line 50 miles or so north of the border. That's the rub. If DEA or local LEs want to set up a dragnet on I-8, let them get authorization to do so from the courts. Having CBP set up a checkpoint well within US borders is a circumvention of that.
Lets say CBP finds drugs on you on I-8. What if you grew them in California and are driving them to Phoenix? You haven't crossed an international border, so thus Customs has nothing to do with it, and since you didn't cross a border, there's no Border to be Protected.
If you agree that CBP can setup checkpoints inside US territory, and check for anything they feel like checking, then you're saying that CBP can de facto operate well outside the scope of their assigned missions on anything within this new Frontier Buffer Zone. They could set up at a mall in San Diego and ask everyone that passes what their citizenship is. They could pull you over in downtown McAllen Texas and ask your citizenship.
The 50-mile checkpoints were supposedly to search for illegals. Now, it appears they're looking for drugs. What's next? That's the point, there's a constant pushing on the boundaries of jurisdiction and scope of responsibility, not just by CBP but by a lot of LEO and pseudo-LEO agencies. You seem to say you're ok with CBP catching drugs in the middle of Southern Arizona or New Mexico. My question is, how is that in any reasonable sense a Border Protection function?
You are right it is all about jurisdiction. US Customs and Border Protections jurisdiction is the entire United States. CBP authority does not stop at the Border, 50 miles from the Border, or 100 miles from the Border. What those authorities are can be have different distinctions depending where the officer is and the nature of the encounter. It has always been such. CBP Officers get their authority from Title 8 and Title 19. There have been no significant changes to those titles in decades except for the name changes such as Immigration (INS) to CBP and Customs to CBP. Some of the concepts being discussed here are very old. Border Search authority came into being with the First Congress and is just as old as the 4th amendment itself.
In your I-8 example, you would be arrested because possession of drugs is a Federal crime. CBP is authorized to enforce Title 8, Title 19, Title 18, Title 21 and many others but those are the big ones. You are getting hung up on the title of the agency. This is an error. You must understand what the agencies authority is, what laws they enforce, and where the agency derives the authority to enforce such.
To further expound on your I-8 example you specify gown so I will assume until you say otherwise you are talking MJ. The Federal government is not really interested too much in MJ unless you are talking about in the hundreds of pounds. If you are talking about that much, chances are strongly in the favor that it was not locally grown. Any other drug (coke, heroin, and in most cases meth) was not manufactured in the United States and most certainly crossed the Border.
You say the DEA or locals should get court approval to set up checkpoints? CBP has done exactly that and the court has ruled repeatedly that they are both legal and constitutional. So where do we do from there?
FB