My 4th of July brush with tyranny

The Mrs. and I went to Karlsbad Caverns this past weekend. We left the morning of the 4th and headed from Southern AZ across the middle of New Mexico. As we drove past Alamogordo (pretty much the dead middle of New Mexico) we were forced to pull off of the highway and submit to a visual inspection by the Border Police. He asked my wife and I if we were US citizens, held up his hand in a "stop" gesture while he scanned our car through the windows, and waved us on. It was a pretty brief encounter, unlike the 3-4 cars that were being searched on the side of the road on the 4th of July. I bet those people had committed the crime of being born brown.


We also had to pass through one of these checkpoints on the way back on Sunday and saw one other that we didn't have to stop at.

Is it even constitutional to detain people like this?

Those checkpoints are everywhere, and it's one of the reasons why I found driving in the region so damned unpleasant.

I was detained for nearly 10 minutes on I-25 north in New Mexico one night because I had Washington state license plates, I was a single (white) male traveling alone. The agent demanded to know where I had been and where I was going, and why. When I said I had no definite plans, he got really upset. Fortunately, he let me go before they started ripping the car apart to plant look for illegal drugs, but it really soured my mood.

And I feel for the U.S. citizens who live in the Southwest, who must every day encounter a modern form of "papers please." (The same happens along I-87 in northern New York, too, I hear.)

Can you imagine if they deployed half of these resources for hunting down real criminals and maybe treating people who are addicted to hard drugs? Or how about spending that money on social programs? :shrug:

One on Highway 19, just north of Nogales, and one on Highway 85 in Organ Pipe Cactus National Park (the road to Puerto Penasco).

even when I was driving a beat up pickup truck with a camper shell on the back. People driving shiny new vehicles with out of state plates get a closer look as territory in California and Texas is much more hosiptible to cross and rental vehicles the favored way to transport illegal aliens.

The people running business is big and profitable, picking up border crossers on back roads and delivering them to businesses all over the country according to contracts. Often the conditions illegal aliens face in this transport are inhumane and quite a few vehicles have been stopped with their occupants near death from heat and thirst.

Those checkpoints are a good thing and long predate this administration.

I really don't see how these checkpoints could be a good thing. I do however see how they can be used to do very bad things. They are already infringing on our Constitutional "Rights".

who want to ship bodies across the country to fill their contracts as cheaply as possible.

That's why they cram them into vans with no food, water or sanitation. They're only Mexicans, you know. :mad:

That's why I'm glad those checkpoints exist. They rarely do a major search and inconvenience us. They do alert state police when they find something suspicious.

What is the other factor here that makes such traffickers so prevalent? Could it be checkpoints like these?

Those checkpoints have been there for 20 years I know about.

The factors are the huge demand for exploitable labor in the US, poverty in Central America with few opportunities for those born poor, currency in the US that trades for a tremendous amount of pesos back home, and profit to be made shipping bodies to men who want tame and exploitable labor.

Add to that the tightening of regulations under Reagan that made it much more difficult to go back and forth across the border, meaning they're more likely to bring the family with them when they cross.

Trying to tie illegal immigration to the presence of checkpoints is one of the stupider things I've seen on this board, and that's saying a lot.

By the way, coyotes are the people on the Mexican side who tell them how and where to cross and where they'll be picked up. The ones who transport them on this side don't have cute names, but they're organized crime.

Would they feel the need to cram into a blacked out van? That's my question.

150 miles north of the border harassing people over something that is basically irrelevant that far from the border. Especially so in a state with as large a Hispanic population as NM, considered the majority BTW.

but remember, even Mexicans can make it 150 miles north of the border before being stopped. They need to carefully inspect people to be sure they don't "look Mexican," using the standards of the border patrol, which means the standards of rural 19 year olds who went to 8 weeks of basic training and were then given a green 4 wheel drive vehicle and a gun and told to stop the Mexican invasion.

the fact that NM has a large Hispanic population. Common sense would suggest that its kind of stupid to be looking for "Mexicans" in a state with a majority of people who fit that description. But then, when did Government have common sense?

and I had an interesting experience when I was in college. I was the designated driver for a bunch of drunk idiots back from a bar in Mexico. We were stopped just past the border by BP. It was late, and I was tired, and all my friends were very obviously drunk, and when we had been stopped, we were driving about 95 (on a 75 mph highway).

While the cop had us stopped, being late and tired as I was, I accidentally stalled out the car in first gear when I tried to start back up.

But, we were none of us Mexican-looking, so the cop didn't care, and he let us go back on our merry way, along with all the racing cars of the people who had been at the same bar as us when it had closed.

Be realistic, though. It may not be strictly constitutional, but if the cops weren't allowed to eyeball people by whether or not they looked Mexican, they wouldn't have any realistic way to maintain a paramilitary force along the border that harassed people for looking a certain way. And God knows, we can't give up the border patrol, or change our ideas of nationhood. It's the LAW, after all.

Or up the I-15 corridor.

Is it even constitutional to detain people like this?

Courts have consistently ruled that checkpoints like that are legal.

You don't have any rights.

There must be some geographical limit on the Border Patrol's jurisdiction; I think it's 75 miles. But ponder that for a moment: Under the 75-mile rule, cities like San Diego, Tucson, El Paso, and the Lower Rio Grande Valley conurbation could all theoretically be subject to warrantless searches and checkpoints at any time. And don't forget Detroit and Buffalo. And what about sea ports? Does the BP authority extend to them (and 75 miles beyond) as well? If so, the majority of the country's population is subject to such bullshit.

We were waved along while the brown people were told to pull over.

There are 8 factors the courts look at :



(1) proximity of the area to the border;

(2) known characteristics of the area;

(3) usual traffic patterns on that road;

(4) agent's previous experience in detecting illegal activity;

(5) information about recent illegal trafficking in aliens or narcotics in the area;

(6) particular aspects or characteristics of the vehicle;

(7) behavior of the driver; and

(8) the number, appearance, and behavior of the passengers.

Fantastic! :thumbsup:

but there was a station between San Diego and LA, think it was near Camp Pendleton on I 5. use to get stopped there all the time from the 73 through 79.

driving while brown.

Unfortunately, everywhere else it's driving while Black.