NYT editorial: With internal citizenship checks, Border Patrol is 'distorted by mission creep'

[Newsjock]

Source: New York Times

... As Nina Bernstein of The Times reported on Monday, border checkpoints aren’t just at the border anymore. She rode the train in western New York and found agents roaming the aisles, questioning passengers about their citizenship and removing those who could not prove they were here legally. What she described looked like just the kind of aggressive internal immigration enforcement that right-wing politicians have clamored for, but is arbitrary, oppressive and dangerously prone to racial profiling.

... This should not be happening. We are well aware of the federal crackdown on illegal immigration, sparked by the clamor for fencing and troops at the border. But we do not recall any discussion of imposing internal immigration checks on public transportation, with agents with dogs and guns randomly hauling people off trains.

The Border Patrol’s mission includes interrogating people as they enter and leave the country, and it is authorized to operate within 100 miles of the border. But as its budget and manpower have soared since 9/11, it is looking like an agency distorted by mission creep, especially on the relatively quiet northern border. In the Rochester area, in western New York, border agents removed 2,788 passengers from trains from October 2005 to September 2009. Rochester sits on Lake Ontario across from Canada, but it is no border city; the border is far out in the middle of the lake.

There is probably a reason the Border Patrol is waging its little-noted campaign on Amtrak and buses way out in rural and western New York and not, say, on the D subway to Coney Island, which happens to be near Kennedy International Airport. Border checks on New York City trains would prompt a much louder clamor about misplaced priorities and racial profiling, and harsher questions about whether the crackdown has anything to do with making the country safer.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01wed2.html?ref=opinion

[Hawkowl]

1. Viva la Gestapo!

USA! USA! USA!

[HEyHEY]

2. That really is fucked up

Asking people for papers when they are just going about their business. Again, all I can say is I hope one day a mob gets angry and beats the shit out of one of these cops.

Years ago, I'd of never said that, but more and more authorities don't give two shits about what people say or want.

[Dawson Leery]

3. +1

[EFerrari]

4. But I have been assured right here at DU that this is not happening.

Oops.

[KT2000]

5. Here is an example of creep:

of how this is getting out of control I live in the NW corner of WA state. We had 8 border patrol and then it was 12, then it was 24. Now they want new office space but the rules say they must have 50 border patrol people to do that. They are buying a building and hire more to reach the 50.

A ship goes back and forth to Canada every day and there is a single loop road that goes around the outer edge of the area - because the Olympic Mountains cover most of the area.

As it is - they sit and watch farm fields with binoculars - after Norm Dicks stopped the checkpoints.