BP Roadblocks: Ineffective, Inefficient & Rife with Abuse

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Two recent articles in the main stream media highlight what most of us who live and work within 100 miles of the southern border have known for years. Interior Border Patrol checkpoints/roadblocks are ineffective, inefficient and rife with abuse.

Citing recently released ACLU documentation, the Associated Press reports that interior Border Patrol immigration checkpoints are responsible for less than 1% of illegal alien interdictions per year. See:

Border Patrol makes few immigration arrests at checkpoints

This despite the fact the Border Patrol allocates on the order of 10% of sector resources to interior checkpoint operations annually.

Also referencing the recent ACLU report regarding Border Patrol malfeasance, The New York Times wrote a far more comprehensive article. See:

Border Patrol Accused of Profiling and Abuse

I’m currently reviewing the recent ACLU report myself along with thousands of pages of documentation accompanying it. CBP illegally withheld the documentation from the ACLU when the organization formally requested it last year.

In order to compel CBP and the Border Patrol to comply with the law, the ACLU was forced to sue the agencies for violation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). While it’s my understanding the lawsuit is ongoing and the Border Patrol is still refusing to release thousands of additional pages of documentation responsive to the ACLU’s request, what has been released so far is damning in itself.

I’ll be writing more about the ACLU’s recent findings regarding interior Border Patrol enforcement operations but the articles referenced above should serve as a good primer.

2 thoughts on “BP Roadblocks: Ineffective, Inefficient & Rife with Abuse”

  1. This is nothing but lazy law enforcement. The words “ineffective” and “inefficient” are very apt.

    Randomness is not a good approach when you want to accomplish something. You organize and structure your approach to achieve any goal. Roadblocks are police passively sitting in hopes that criminals approach them. It’s haphazard guessing that is always shown to be much less effective than active patrolling.

    There is a reason the 4th amendment uses the words “probable cause” and “reasonable.” If you have no indication of wrongful activity, then why would you waste your time on that activity? If you have no reason to suspect something, then why interact with someone minding his own business?

    Randomly doing this thousands of times per day will give a poor result. That is the mathematical nature of randomness. A chef does not stick a cake pan in the oven before adding the ingredients. You don’t just pick any step when baking; you start with step one. You can’t just randomly perform those steps in hopes of pulling a fine souffle from the oven. That would be random, illogical, and wasteful.

    Interacting with law-abiding citizens in hopes of finding crime is also random, illogical, wasteful, and downright slothful.

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