Originally Posted by Deeg
I don't know how this keeps coming up. It's simply not true. If you change the scenario a little bit to inbound travelers instead of outbound ones, it does happen on rare occasion. But that makes sense...agents should be able to follow someone away from the port and conduct surveillance of their activities. Unlike the normal border search, however, there are requirements as to "reasonable suspicion" and "probable cause" and all that good stuff.
Can you clarify which part of this you don't think is true? I've had friends stopped at these internal borders that were at about 80 miles from the actual border with Canada. They hadn't left the country, but still got the same treatment as if they had. At 80 miles from the border, a very hefty chunck of those who are processed at these checkpoints will be people who have not left the country.
How many people do you think are within 80 miles of the Mexican border near San Diego, for example?