Inside the Massive U.S. 'Border Zone'

Did you know that you can be stopped and searched by the US Border Patrol while traveling from Seattle, WA to Portland, OR?

At its core, the law allows immigration officers to access private lands—except “dwellings”—within the 25 air miles (28.7 miles) of the border. Congress also authorized CBP to set permanent and temporary checkpoints, patrol highways, and board buses, trains, and other vehicles “within a reasonable distance” of the U.S. border, which regulations in 1953 set as “up to a 100 miles.”

CBP can set up checkpoints anywhere it wants within the 100-mile zone and “can temporarily seize all vehicles that drive up to an immigration checkpoint... to conduct an immigration inspection,” a spokesperson said. If they feel they have probable cause, they can search the vehicles. Agents at checkpoints also have wide discretion to pull people aside for a secondary inspection, which could last, per some accounts, for up to 40 minutes. 

“It really is kind of a constitution-free zone," says Patrick Eddington, a policy analyst who has been compiling data on border patrol’s internal checkpoints at the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank. “I guess the best way to phrase it is that in this area, [border patrol agents] are being allowed to nullify people's rights.”  (CityLab, May 14, 2018)