Because some of you readers may not have a firm command of Spanish slang I offer my crude translation; La Pinche 'Migra = the Fucking Border Patrol.
We denizens of the rural Southwestern Deserts, Mestizos or those of paler extractions (there are but a handful of other ethnicities in most areas), often have reason to loathe the Border Patrol. Our reactions may be deep visceral terror and hate to mild frustration as we are subject to their un-American antics. Which it is, is of course inevitably subject to our race and socio-economic class.
Whatever problems the Migra cause for those on the U.S.-Mexican frontera are, the last 30 years of SCOTU decisions and the Acts of Congress that give the Border Patrol its overweening jurisdiction to harass and annoy us should be cause to worry for all Americans, whatever their race, class, or State of residence.
For affluent retirees, whose 40 acre McMansions spring up like strangely misplaced Mushrooms on the overgrazed, subdivied and dessicated ranches, the Border Patrol is a mere annoyance. A five minute wait in their shiny new German autos as they queue off the Interstate and pass by a Border Patrol Checkpoint. No need to even roll down their windows and let the blastfurnace heat of the desert in. They don't even look at the quick and warm smile of the civil servant as he waves them through; they hope they're not late for lunch at the Country Club.
For the working-class white folks, the checkpoint is more than just an annoyance, it is also a potetntial hazard. Those whose faces prune and wrinkle prematurely in the desperate desert dryness as they pour the concrete, nail up the studs and stucco the Ticky Tack Levittown clones in the desnuded and bladed desert, the Border Patrol means they hope that roach from the left in the truck's ashtray from Friday afternoon doesn't alert the dog at the checkpoint. It is also another jab at their pride; while they work year after grinding year (14K a year per capita for Santa Cruz County residents) a tweenty four year old making 40K with great health benefits asks them their citizenship from an air-conditioned booth.
For the young mestizo, the chicano, the vato who embraces his culture, it is not just el reten,the check-point, that is the problem, but everywhere. At the checkpoint he fears being pulled to the side because his head is shaved close and he wears black clothing, or perhaps his car tiene rollas (has oversized chrome magnum wheels) and its rear window etched with his last name in Gothic letters. But even on the streets of Nogales or walking down a dusty road in Carmen or Patagonia some pinche Migra can frisk him down, demand to see his drivers license to prove he is Mexican-American and not just some Mojado, and search his vehicle for contraband.
Jurisdiction for this is found in
U.S. Code(authors note: this link doesn't work here but does at the end of the diary, all the others work n/t:-(
(a) Powers without warrant
Any officer or employee of the Service authorized under regulations prescribed by the Attorney General shall have power without warrant -
within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States, to board and search for aliens any vessel within the territorial waters of the United States and any railway car, aircraft, conveyance, or vehicle, and within a distance of twenty-five miles from any such external boundary to have access to private lands, but not dwellings, for the purpose of patrolling the border to prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the United States;
US code provides for warrantless searches, the dreaded BP checkpoints, only 25 miles from the Border; strangely enough these checkpoints are almost inevitably further north than that. Essentially they're wherever the Border Patrol wants one. I have passed through them on Interstates 10,19,and 25 as well as on State highways in places like Alamogordo New Mexico (over 100 miles north of the international border) and just about every dirt road and secondary highway in Southern AZ.
The SCOTUS begain ruling on border searches in 1973; at first with some respect payed to our Fourth Ammendment Rights,but latter with none. That year in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, the SCOTUS held that a warrantless stop and search of defendant's automobile 20 miles from the border by a roving patrol lacked probable cause to believe that the vehicle contained illegal aliens and the Pinche 'Migra violated the Fourth Amendment. The SCOTUS also invalidated an automobile search at a fixed checkpoint well removed from the border because the invasion of privacy entailed in a search was just as intrusive and must be justified by a showing of probable cause or consentOrtiz v.U.S.93
In the heady days of 1975 the SCOTUS really did the right thing when in United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975)
the court decided that the stopping of the defendant's car solely because the officers observed the Mexican appearance of the occupants was unjustified.
The changed their minds is 1976.
In United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U.S. 543 (1976)
the SCOTUS deemed the intrusion on Fourth Amendment interests to be quite limited, even if officers acted on the basis of the Mexican appearance of the occupants in referring motorists to a secondary inspection area for questioning, because the elimination of the practice would deny to the Government its only practicable way to apprehend smuggled aliens and to deter the practice. Just like the decision to use torutre made because of "exigent circumstances", so racism became institutionalized in the Border Patrol and all rights for all citizens imperiled.
Flash forward to a case decided in 2002. In U.S. v. Arvizu the SCOTUS decided completely random searches without checkpoint or any probable cause was needed. In fact, the Border Patrol's agent suspiscions were raised because:(among other reasons, but still sited in the original court procedings) the defendent passed by at a slow rate of speed and didn't wave, and then when his children waved mechanically, "artificially". Though the Court of Appeals found,"If every odd act engaged in by one's children ... could contribute to a finding of reasonable suspicion, the vast majority of American parents might be stopped regularly within a block of their homes" the SCOTUS found,"the Court of Appeals should not have casually rejected this factor..."
Think about it, if you are of Mexican ancestry and BP officer Mean Joe Gringo doesn't like the look of your kids, he can pull you over and strip search you. I have regullarly witnessed the BP pull over AZ plated vehicles and line up parents with the little children (sometimes 5 or 6; Mexicans often are "good" catholics) on the side of a 75 MPH interstate to check ID. It makes me so mad I think of the Bruce Coburn song,"If I had a rocket launcher(some SOB would pay)"
"Well that's just on the Border" you may say but considering that they're actually beginning to outsource the BP in another ten years or fifteen years you may find a some overpaid,undereducated Blackwater employee checking your ID as you queue through a Checkpoint on I-95 outside of Baltimore.
Lost Link for U.S. Code