First, let's drop the goon, it's not substantive to the discussion.

Second, I'm not sure of your status so I can't speak to you of what happened with the agent. If you are a USC then you need carry no ID for Immigration purposes. If you're an alien, then you must carry ID, either I-551 or non-immigrant docs.

It's up to the alien to prove they're in status. If the agent believes it's a alien but there is no documentation (person claims USC) it's up to the agent to provide the subsequent cause allowing detention. Detentions are always to be brief - there's no standard number set but the situation is looked at with the totality of the circumstances. Usually they're to be measured in minutes, not hours.

I am a US Citizen, but I was told that I had to carry my US passport at all times, even when traveling internally. Therefore, if I am to believe you, the agent grossly abused his authority.

And take a look at this artcile in LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,3056253.story

Detentions in some of these cases certainly measured longer than minutes.

IMO anyone who tramples the rights and dignity of other people is a goon.

On Oct. 19. 2007, whilst traveling in Texas I was detained for wearing a T-shirt I bought in Mexico in Oct. 1998.

http://peachfront.diaryland.com/graveinehil.html

What can I tell you? I don't know if it's legal or not, but I don't think there's anything we as a peace-loving people can do about it.
They have guns, and we have T-shirts. If they wanna detain us, they're gonna detain us. They DID get my license, search my car, and phoned everybody and his brother looking for some way that I was in the wrong, but after awhile they had to acknowledge that wearing an old T-shirt probably wasn't all that and they had to let me proceed with my day...

It certainly is substantive...

goon: noun:
1: a stupid person
2 a: a man hired to terrorize or eliminate opponents

An agent of the US government that claims the right to indefinitely detain you for failing to do something that you are not required to do (carry your internal travel papers... aka US passport) is both stupid and has been hired (seemingly acting within the scope of his/her employment) to terrorize people who oppose demands to satisfy an unconstitutional "requirement" by denying such opponents their Constitutionally protected rights, including the trivial rights delineated in the Constitution*.

Goon is a very accurate description of the person described by PoliceStateSurvivor (I will assume that the survivor is accurately recounting the situation.)

*: Amendments are part of the Constitution.

Here is what happened:

I was driving on a County road North of I-8 towards Anza-Borrego Desert Park. Mrs. PoliceStateSurvivor was with me. On that day La Migra was operating a checkpoint. There was no traffic and I was stopped.

BP: Are you US Citizens?
Me: Yes we are.
BP: Do you have proof?
Me: Yes we do (Hand him my passport)

BP goes through every single page and hands it back to me.

Me: I did not think US Citizens had to carry their papers with them.

BP: Yes they are. Since 9-11 US Citizens must carry proof of citizenship. And since you have a foreign accent, I can detain you as long as necessary to verify your status, which can be indefinite. I suggest you carry your passport with you at all times.

Mrs. PoliceStateSurvivor was born in the US and does not have a foreign accent. She was asked if she was a US Citizen, but was not required to produce any kind of a proof.

I wrote a letter of complaint, which, of course, went straight to the trash can. I also called the local BP office and was told the same thing: since I have a foreign accent, I would be well advised to carry my passport at all times. Otheriwse, I could be subject to indefinite detention.

This led me to think that the goon (Yes, the term applies) I encountered was not an isolated rotten apple, but that La Migra as a whole is a bunch of power drunk thugs, worse than TSA. The story in LA Times (See the link in my earlier post) only confirmed this impression.

Nice to know FTers have their priorites straight!


When we transferred to AZ we would regularly (2-3 times a week) have a cop follow us for a bit--on occasion one would turn on the lights/siren but then shut them down again. We finally found out it was inane curiosity over that damned pink brest cancer plate because it looks almost fake and they were sure something was fishy there.

A couple weeks ago, MrsJ and the kids were driving down I-10 and at the outskirts of Tucson to the NW, she said they shut down the interstate...EVERYONE traveling on I-10 (4? lanes) had to merge into a single lane. There were officers from BP, DEA, county sheriff and local police. She said a cop gave her a sheet of paper which explained:

1. The stop was mandatory
2. You had to show ID (as in driver license since you were out on the interstate)
3. You weren't under arrest (yet)
4. You don't have to submit to a search of your vehicle's interior BUT
5. They are and will use the drug dogs and if a dog 'hits' on your car then you'll have to undergo 'secondary' checks which means you MUST then allow them to search the insides of your car

To his credit, the cop noticed our toddlers sleeping in the back and promised not to have the dog jump up and possibly scare the kids. She said they didn't just have Agent Fido walk around the car ahead. They had the dog jump up on the hood and then walk along the entire length of the car as well!

In the few hours they had been running the, hmmmm, roadblock? They arrested 3 drunk drivers, ~20 people of questionable legal status, drug dealers and/or mules and confiscated a bunch of drugs.

I have no doubt they'll be running such checkpoints/stops/blockades again.

I believe the Supreme Court in Indianapolis v Edmond declared this type of roadblocks unconstitutional since it is obvious that drug interdiction was the primary purpose.

Ahhh but see they have "cover" because while there may have been a couple of DEA weenies present, there were way more CBP agents. You'll see as many CBP vehicles as state police in the "frontier zone" (that 75 100? mile zone from the border) along I-10 and I-19.

So it may have been more a drug interdiction checkpoint but having CBP running the show (legitimately or not) turns it into a customs checkpoint and since they took several (alleged) illegal aliens into custody, that gives them further credence.

Thats state.

This is Fed.

Totally different.

I may be mistaken, but if a state action violates the US (Federal) Constitution, how does the same action not violate the Constitution (excluding, of course, powers specifically delegated to the Feds.)

What other rights do we lose when CBP is present? Clearly our rights under the 5th amendment are diminished by their presence. How about 1st, 2nd, etc.?

My thought exactly. I think Centurion210 is a perfect example that explains why a lot of people hate and distrust LEOs. His disdain for our rights shows in every single post he makes.

Unfortunately, this is a perfect example of how giving a law enforcement agency an inch (the Martinez-Fuerte decision, which allowed brief stops to check citizenship/immigration status) results in them taking a mile by turning these stops into indefinite detentions and using them for drug interdiction operations.

This is why I think Martinez-Fuerte was a grave mistake.

If you choose to label an individual as a goon then that's fine. Not everybody in the agency is a goon, and your "Those goons seem to think they can stop anybody and ask for their papers anytime they want" seemed to imply that they were. My apologies if I misunderstood.

A detention that is measured a long time is usually considered an arrest. And yes, mistakes have been and will continue to be made so long as human beings are involved in the process.

He was wrong.

The problem is you are completely dismissive of the prospect of law enforcement acting outside the law in these discussions. Does what might be legal, ethical or constitutional really come into the thought process of an over-zealous officer looking for the "big catch" on the backroads of Riverside County?

The "law" doesn't really come into it when an individual is going up against a pathetic wannabe Chuck Norris who thinks only they stand between America and certain destruction and has the Blue Wall of Silence backing them up.

How often do LEOs, etc. (eg. CBP) get disciplined, or at least sent for re-education, for failing to know the rights of the people they are sworn to protect and the most basic aspects of the laws they are supposed to uphold?

If a pilot forgets something like the need to extend the landing gear before landing he/she will probably be fired, or at least sent back to school (regardless of whether or not the pilot actually does a wheels up landing). What happens to a CBP agent who forgets that US citizens do not need internal passports?