Border Patrol expands searches
Officers operate far away from borders in crackdown on illegal immigration
WASHINGTON — Border Patrol officers are working without permission on private property and setting up checkpoints up to 100 miles away from the border under a little-known federal law that is being used more widely in the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration.
In Texas, a rancher has accused the Border Patrol of trespassing after he said he found a surveillance camera the agency placed on his property.
In New Hampshire, border officers working with state officials conducted what the American Civil Liberties Union described as illegal drug searches after residents were arrested at immigration checkpoints set up on a major interstate highway. One of the checkpoints was set up just before a local marijuana festival.
And recently in Florida, New York and Washington state, Border Patrol officers have been criticized for boarding buses and trains to question riders — mostly American citizens — about their immigration status.
Officials conceded that some of the searches — particularly those aboard Greyhound buses or Amtrak trains on domestic routes — had increased under President Donald Trump. Field supervisors have regained the authority to order the searches, instead of officials at Border Patrol headquarters in Washington.
“The U.S. Border Patrol conducts transportation checks in accordance with the law,” said Stephanie Malin, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol. “Transportation checks are performed when and where there is an operational benefit.”
The agency is an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, which would not provide statistics on how often, or where, it checks domestic travel passengers or patrols on private property.
Current federal immigration law does not require the government to obtain a warrant before searching people and their property at ports of entry. Once away from a land or maritime border, but still within what the Justice Department has defined as a “reasonable distance” of 100 miles, officers can search people. But many border residents and travelers say that authority amounts to an invasion of privacy.
An estimated 200 million Americans live within 100 miles of the border, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. At least 11 states — mostly in the Northeast — are either entirely or almost entirely in the 100-mile radius.
But perhaps no Border Patrol searches have generated as much controversy as the immigration inspections of passengers boarding Greyhound buses or Amtrak trains. In January, officers arrested a Jamaican woman traveling on a bus from Orlando, Fla., to Miami who had overstayed a tourist visa. That same month, officers in Spokane, Wash., arrested an immigrant in the country illegally, traveling with his son on a Greyhound bus from Seattle to Montana. Both episodes have prompted widespread outrage.
Homeland security officials deny the charges of racial profiling and maintain their authority to conduct the searches.
Greyhound said it is required by law to “cooperate with the relevant enforcement agencies if they ask to board our buses or enter stations.”