180 miles south of Phoenix, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly
visited the border city of Nogales today to hammer home the Trump team’s commitment to border security.
But there are already tough measures in place.
The border is guarded by agents with military-grade surveillance equipment, as well as special checkpoints
that can be set up on roads and highways anywhere within 100 miles of a U.S. border.
Within that vast zone, Border Control is given broad leeway to stop, detain and search vehicles.
And for people who live there, the agents are a constant and often invasive presence.
David Noriega went to Southern Arizona to see what life is like within the 100-mile zone.
– This is a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Southern Arizona.
It’s one of three that choke off all routes north between Nogales and Sasabe.
Right in the middle is a tiny, unincorporated community called Arivaca.
There isn’t much in Arivaca, meaning that whenever residents leave town,
for things like shopping and banking, they have to go through the Border Patrol.
A few years ago, a group of residents in Arivaca decided they had had enough.
They called themselves People Helping People,
and, working from this tiny office—one of only a handful of buildings on Arivaca’s main drag—
they made plans to monitor the closest checkpoint.
– What kind of equipment do you guys usually bring with you?
– We bring, you know, clipboards with forms, on which we document the number of people
coming through the checkpoint and any incidents that happen.
– Once or twice a week, Peter Ragan makes the trip to the checkpoint, where he and other volunteers
spend hours documenting the Border Patrol agents’ every move.
The group says the data it’s gathered at the checkpoint shows that
Latinos are more than 20 times more likely to be asked for ID.
The ACLU cited the data in a report, and is representing Ragan and one other person in a lawsuit
against Customs and Border Protection over their right to monitor the checkpoint.
– Before I was a citizen, I used to show my resident card.
And then, after I got my citizenship, I said, “I’m not showing them anything.”
– Some members of the group, like Carlota Wray, say they’ve experienced the profiling personally.
– Why are you doing this? Why do you do what you do?
– They always give me a hard time here.
Because of my color.
I mean, after living all these years in this little town, and coming through here pretty much every day,
I was really sick of it. I'm still sick of it.
– Typically, the law does not allow police to stop people indiscriminately at checkpoints.
But, in 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that checkpoints near the border are lawful for
the “sole purpose of conducting a routine and limited inquiry into residence status.”
It wasn’t until the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton cracked down on illegal immigration as a part of a
broader move to the political center, that checkpoints proliferated.
– That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more
by hiring a record number of new border guards.
– Since then, the ACLU and other critics have accused the Border Patrol of using the checkpoints
for general criminal enforcement, overstepping the line set by the Supreme Court.
They say this leads to agents routinely violating the Fourth Amendment rights of residents by stopping,
searching, and detaining them without suspicion.
On top of that, humanitarian groups have partially faulted the checkpoints for the deaths
of thousands of migrants who are pushed off the roads and into the desert.
The checkpoints have always divided the people of Arivaca,
with some residents saying they make the community safer.
And People Helping People’s volunteers say that the divisions have grown starker since
Donald Trump successfully campaigned on connecting immigrants with crime.
We reached out to Customs and Border Protection for comment about allegations of Fourth Amendment
violations and racial profiling at the checkpoints.
We also asked whether they intended to increase checkpoint activity under the new administration.
They declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
On the day we spent with Arivaca’s checkpoint monitors, 103 cars passed through the checkpoint.
Agents only asked people in two cars for their IDs, including the people in this pick-up truck
who say they live right up the road.
President Trump has already signed an executive order calling for 5,000 new border patrol agents,
and members of People Helping People say they fear the agents will grow more aggressive
under the new administration.
For them, this means more time by the side of the road.
– I imagine this gets a little tedious.
– Um, yeah, it can.
But there’s some nice mountains to look at.
So, even though the view this way is not so great, if there’s nobody coming through,
you can look beyond the checkpoint to the mountains and
imagine the checkpoint’s not there anymore.