Column: Expansion of Border Patrol is worrisome

For most residents of Hawaii, the border is thought of as a distant place that does not affect their daily lives. This turns out to be wrong. According to the federal government, the entire state is in the official border enforcement zone.

The congressional authorization for the Border Patrol says that agents can patrol within “a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States.” In 1947, in an administrative decision taken without public input or debate, the reasonable distance was set as 100 miles from borders and coastlines. The result is a vast border zone that includes the homes of nearly two-thirds of the United States population.

Honolulu, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., are all in the border zone, as are the entire states of Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Hawaii.

The definition of the border zone matters because Congress and the Supreme Court have given Border Patrol agents expansive authority to prevent undocumented immigration in that zone, creating situations when constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures from the Fourth Amendment do not apply. This year the Supreme Court ruled in Egbert v. Boule (2022) that Border Patrol agents have immunity from prosecution even if they violate the constitutional rights of an American citizen during the course of their official duties.

Within the 100-mile zone, Border Patrol agents can stop any vehicle if they can articulate at least two facts for reasonable suspicion, one of which can be based on the occupants’ race. During the Obama administration, the Department of Justice reconfirmed that Border Patrol agents can use racial profiling in their work.

The Border Patrol also operates 113 internal checkpoints on highways deep inside the United States, 25 to 100 miles from the border itself. The Supreme Court ruled agents at the checkpoints could stop and briefly hold every single vehicle on a highway to ask questions about citizenship. Over the years, the checkpoint facilities have become elaborate with drug-sniffing dogs, automated license plate readers, and radiation sensors. From 2016 to 2020, 250 million vehicles passed through an interior Border Patrol checkpoint inside the United States.

Still, as a resident of Hawaii, you may be thinking, “So what?” Even if the Border Patrol could deploy their expansive authority in the entire state, they are not doing it right now.

The problem is that over the last 50 years there has been a steady growth in the size of the Border Patrol and in the locations where they conduct their duties. In the 1970s, there were only 1,500 agents, who worked primarily at the U.S.- Mexico border. Today, there are 19,000 agents and they have expanded their work into many communities that were unaccustomed to border enforcement.

Forty-one of the Border Patrol’s 113 interior checkpoints are on the northern border in states like New Hampshire and Maine. Ninety-one percent of the people cited for drug possession at an interior checkpoint are American citizens, the vast majority of whom had not left the country at all. Celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Fiona Apple, Nelly and Willie Nelson have all been stopped for drug possession at interior checkpoints.

The continuous expansion of the Border Patrol into new locations far from their traditional areas of operation suggest that there should be concern about where and how they will be deploying their expansive authority in the future. While the Border Patrol has not yet set up checkpoints on H-1 or the Saddle Road, legally they could. It is time to reconsider that authority before they do.

Reece Jones is a professor of geography and environment at the University of Hawaii, and author of “Nobody is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States.”