Political Quotes

“``Show me your papers.'' Those are words that you should never hear once inside the United States. Unless a government agent has a legitimate reason to stop and search you--a reasonable suspicion or probable cause--Americans should not be subject to questioning and detention for merely going about their daily lives. This is a fundamental tenet of the Fourth Amendment. Yet Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operations are effectively immune from the Fourth Amendment within a broadly defined ``border zone.'' And this so-called border zone need not be near the border at all: Seventy-year-old regulations define it as up to 100 miles from any border, land or sea. According to the CBP, southern Vermont is in the border zone, as is the entire State of Florida, and even Richmond, Virginia. In fact two-thirds of the entire U.S. population is in the border zone. In Vermont, under the Trump administration, the border zone has resulted in highway checkpoints and bus boardings. In May, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents set up the first highway checkpoint in a decade. The checkpoint was set up miles from the Canadian border in South Hero, Vermont. It was in operation for hours. We do not know how many hundreds of cars were stopped, but we do know that it did not lead to a single arrest or seizure. Last month, the CBP established a second checkpoint in the same location.…”