When border security goes too far

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has posted a fact sheet on the US Constitution Free Zone, where the normal protections of the 4th Amendment don't apply:

* Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.

* The border, however, has always been an exception. There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply. For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a "routine search."

* But what is “the border”? According to the government, it is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the "external boundary" of the United States.

* As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit.

* Border Patrol has been setting up checkpoints inland — on highways in states such as California, Texas and Arizona, and at ferry terminals in Washington State. Typically, the agents ask drivers and passengers about their citizenship. Unfortunately, our courts so far have permitted these kinds of checkpoints — legally speaking, they are "administrative" stops that are permitted only for the specific purpose of protecting the nation's borders. They cannot become general drug-search or other law enforcement efforts.

* However, these stops by Border Patrol agents are not remaining confined to that border security purpose. On the roads of California and elsewhere in the nation — places far removed from the actual border — agents are stopping, interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing.

* The bottom line is that the extraordinary authorities that the government possesses at the border are spilling into regular American streets.

As Radley Balko says, "we're not exactly to the point of 'Ihre Papiere, bitte' Berlin yet, but the ACLU does warn that the area of the country 100 miles from every border and coastline would include about 190 million people, or nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population (see map below)."

Nobody (well, damned few people) argue that the border needs to be monitored, but the over-expansion of the definition of what constitutes the border is a very bad thing. 100 miles is an arbitrary number . . . who can object if the government decides it should be 200 or 300 miles? At what point can anyone say "this far, but no further"? If you've already conceded 100 miles, there's no logical stopping point, is there?