You Have No Constitutional Rights If You Live Within 100 Miles Of Mexico Or Canada Border

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just issued an environmental report on its enhanced security plan to cover an area extending from the East Coast to the West Coast, from the northern border of the United States to 100 miles south of the border. While there are few specifics on the new security measures, the environmental report offers enough to see how we will be protected against threats to national security coming from Canada. The Department of Homeland security will enhance efforts and technologies to reduce the danger from “known terrorist affiliates and extremist groups [that] have an undisputed presence along the Northern Border in both the United States and Canada.” Northern Border Security Programs, p. 1-3, September 2011 (Northern Border) (Image: thelastminute)

In 2006 the American Civil Liberties Union exposed the expansion of border control activities to within 100 miles of any point on the U.S. border. ACLU labeled this area the Constitution Free Zone. Search and seizure options at border checkpoints are not constrained by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S Constitution, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. Now, thanks to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), just because they’re within 100 miles of the nearest border nearly 200 million citizens are subject to searching and procedures that previously were used exclusively at border checkpoints.

What do they have in store for citizens on the northern border?

Some highlights of the program include: checkpoints far from the border (but within the 100-mile limit); increased patrol activity; remote video surveillance system systems; upgraded surveillance and telecommunications systems; high-powered X-ray machines of various kinds; and fencing or vehicle barriers at selected points along the border.

The new and improved “High-Energy X-Ray Imaging Scanners” (Northern Border, p. 2-12) expand national security radiation exposure from airline passengers to the much broader audience of drivers and their families, for example, who choose to visit and return from Canada, as well as those who choose to visit the United States from Canada, and anyone unlucky enough to drive into a checkpoint in the Constitution Free Zone.

Buried within the report was this findings, DHS asserts that even though “exposure to high levels of radiation would increase a person’s probability of developing cancer and hereditary genetic damage,” (Northern Border, 8-13-10, p. 201), the impacts of this program will be “negligible.” One wonders if their analysis has considered the kids sitting in the back seat of the car, protected by nothing more than that back seat and their clothing, while a CBP agents X-rays the car’s trunk with a mobile device. It’s hard to feel warm and fuzzy about impacts being negligible when you can’t see any analysis to support that assertion.

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