You are the one that abandoned us for cool accents, hard bodies and shrimp on the barbie.

Nope, white as a ghost.

My image of Australians includes one 28 oz beer can in each hand.

...while going through the checkpoint, with shoes on. (Yeah, okay, I can live without Popeye's.)

To the OP: Sorry we hijacked your thread with chicken and beer. I tried to think of a way to get this back on topic but I don't know what to say about your situation.

For those of us who have spent any part of our lives close to the Rio Grande, traveling, working, hunting, etc., stops by/visits with the Border Patrol have been routine for as much of my nearly 70 years as I can remember.....Nothing new, but more and more visible today. As with the state's Game Wardens, their writ is wide and extensive, and reasonable suspicion tends to be in the eye of the beholder. Certainly, the wide use of US-licensed vehicles and drivers to transship illegals and "drogas" on remote roads near the Border have caused the federal courts in the Valley, San Antonio and El Paso to accept an agent's "suspicions" at face value. The level of corruption and the number of US residents "facilitating" the flow of contraband makes the BP/ICE justifiably edgy about non-local vehicles on less well traveled roads and local vehicles coming and going from border areas without official crossing points but where the river is fordable on foot. Most/All of the old manually operated vehicle ferries (the sort propelled by a guy "walking" the craft across on a line rigged between the North and South banks) on the river have been put out of business by increased regulation.

Lest some here presume it's a "ethnic" thing, an extremely high percentage of BP agents on the Texas Border are Hispanics themselves (while essentially all local LEOs are Mexican American, from Brownsville until you get to El Paso where there are some Gringo police and sheriff's deputies).

Sorry for the very short reply last night about my ethnicity - I had been enjoying some micro brews and couldn't think beyond 1 sentence when I got back to my hotel

What I can't understand is how reasonable suspicion can be inferred from driving down a country road. In my case I was on State Highway 549 which runs parallel to I-20. After stopping in Deming I wanted different scenery so I took the state highway for ~ 40 miles or so - that is reasonable suspicion?

Wow, if that is the case, it is very scary in how far we have gone in giving up our rights.

You weren't a local and they got interested. Not saying it was right, it wasn't, but they were curious.

The BP made a bogus stop and he knew it. It was probably done out of boredom and not a nefarious motive.

This incident and the one about checking citizenship on the San Diego trolley have a common theme. There is a pretty good website all about internal border checkpoints: Checkpoint USA.

The owner of this website is a pretty famous guy who has documented his encounters with the Border Patrol and other police agencies at a fixed checkpoint he apparently traverses daily to & from work. He has posted over a dozen YouTube and other videos about his encounters. It's fascinating stuff and, if you love our Constitution, downright scary. The guy has fought and won two separate lawsuits. (He's 2-for-2).

In addition to ports of entry -- land borders, airports, seaports, etc, I learned from some research on his site and referenced links that there are two types of internal border checkpoints permitted: fixed and roving. Each have their own set of rules and legal constraints.

It sounds as if a bunch of constraints about roving checkpoints were violated here. I would certainly check it out. As for the trolley harassment, I'm not clear whether this was a fixed or a roving checkpoint. If it's a roving checkpoint, they violated a whole bunch of constraints. If it was a fixed site, I'm not sure it fits that definition, either.

This could just as easily been set up in downtown Detroit as it was in San Diego. If this was something that the BP and TSA cooked up on their own, DHS has once again rubbed our noses in the Constitution.

Just having certain states' plates will get your pulled over sometimes.

My friend is a cop in suburban St Louis. They pull over any Texas or California plates they see. Their position/argument is that so many of them transport drugs in their area it is valid. Not saying it is but that is what they do.

Of course 40 years ago driving with Yankee plates in the deep south could get one pulled over too...

I had a vehicle titled with German/NATO tags shipped back to the USA a couple of years ago, and had my valid NATO tags on the car (good for at least 30 days stateside) and got pulled over in Louisana, just because the cop had never seen them before. After explaining gov't paperwork to Bubba in slow small words I was on my way.

And yes Popeye's rocks. I will drive from the Dreilandpunt area over two hours to Spangdahlem Germany just to eat at their Popeye's. ^^

Ciao,
FH

Still happens today.

Never thought I'd spend the majority of my adult life in the twilight of the free world.

--Sam

Most people up to no good like to take the side roads that bypass checkpoints. Not that you were or that this road was such a side road, but that's my guess.

Side roads are always heavily monitored.

That's not a roving checkpoint, but a roving traffic stop. Very different animals.

If you read through the legal cites on the website I referenced, the Border Patrol doing this is different than a garden variety cop doing it. In this case, it's clearly a roving border patrol checkpoint. The stop and subsequent investigation has very strict reasonable suspicion and probable cause criteria attached to it.

BP overwatching TSA yesterday at Tucson airport, in the domestic departure terminal. Not stopping anyone, mind you, just hanging out in the vicinity of the ID checker.