Campaign Action
New legislation introduced by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Tom Udall of New Mexico, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon would usher in new requirements on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, requiring them “to document every instance when they stop, search, or interrogate people,” which would then be reported to Congress:
Under current law, agents from both departments have broad authority to stop and question people about their immigration status. In the 100-mile border zone — the area of the US that’s within 100 miles of a land or water border — agents can pull over cars and board vehicles to ask passengers about their citizenship if they suspect a person is not in the country legally. (In the rest of the country, ICE agents can’t enter private property without a warrant or pull over vehicles without probable cause of an immigration violation.) But the law doesn’t require agents keep track of whom they stop or why, unless the agents detain someone or end up using force.
The legislation “would require the agencies to start collecting data every time officers question someone about their immigration status when they are not at an airport or border crossing. They would need to report the time, date, and place of each stop, and the basis for questioning someone and the duration of the stop, among other details.”
The legislation doesn’t have much of a chance of passing in a Republican-led Congress that is intent only on enabling Donald Trump’s mass deportation force, but it does provide a blueprint going forward for Democrats should they sweep control of Congress, and eventually the White House. What it also does is shed sunlight on the horrific abuses coming from Trump’s unleashed mass deportation agents.
More than 200 million Americans live in this 100-mile zone, yet “DHS does not publish data on how often CBP agents stop and question people in the border zone, so it's hard to tell if it's happening more often under Trump. Gillibrand’s bill targets that lack of data and transparency.” The bill comes following widely-publicized incidents of immigration agents asking for the citizenship status of passengers on Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses:
Here's the thing: Most Americans live in this so-called 100-mile zone. It covers all of Florida, most of New York state, several other states entirely — including New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island — the nation's capital, and the country's largest cities, including New York City and Los Angeles.
CBP officers are supposed to catch unauthorized immigrants who are arriving in the country, so they can only stop people at checkpoints and patrols in this zone. ICE agents are tasked with tracking down people who are working and living illegally in the United States, so they can operate anywhere. But in the border zone, they have the same freedom as CBP agents to pull over cars and board trains to look for unauthorized immigrants.
Border Patrol agents have been doing this for years in multiple states, most recently in a viral video showing agents questioning and detaining a black woman of Caribbean descent in Florida. And because of this zone, immigration agents say they have the right to do this. But, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) notes, "the Fourth Amendment protects businesses as well as individuals, and we believe Greyhound has the Fourth Amendment right to refuse consent to board its buses”:
“Greyhound is in the business of transporting its passengers safely from place to place. It should not be in the business of subjecting its passengers to intimidating interrogations, suspicion-less searches, warrantless arrests, and the threat of deportation.”
Yet, Trump officials proposed lowering hiring standards in order to bring thousands more federal immigration agents onboard, despite them engaging in extortion and sexual assault, purposefully destroying jugs of water left for migrants in the desert, violating international agreements, and even killing. According to The Guardian, the government “has paid out more than $60m in legal settlements” in incidents perpetrated by immigration agents.
“Keeping our country safe cannot come at a cost to basic human rights,” Sen. Gillibrand told Vox. “When border patrol agents stop and question people in New York and in many places across the country, they aren’t keeping data about why they targeted a particular person or what happened during their encounter.”
“Border patrol agents have a duty to protect our borders without trampling on our constitutional rights,” Sen. Warren said. “Without critical data to track stops and searches, Congress and the public cannot fully monitor and hold agents accountable when they cross the line.”