Border Patrol Agents Stop Domestic Travelers at New York Airport
Border Patrol Agents Stop Domestic Travelers at New York Airport
A search for a deportation target leads to a demand for travelers' "papers" at JFK
http://img.wennermedia.com/article-l...dd7b96ae8b.jpgCBP agents, like the one pictured here in January in Atlanta, searched travelers from a domestic flight in New York City Wednesday. Erik S. Lesser/EPA/Redux
By Tim Dickinson
1 hour ago
Passengers of a domestic Delta flight from San Francisco to New York were told to show their identity documents to uniformed agents of the Customs and Border Protection agency upon their arrival at John F. Kennedy airport on Wednesday evening.
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CBP officers are border agents, whose statutory authority is generally limited to international arrivals.
CBP agents inspected passenger identifications on the jetbridge by the door of the aircraft. A CBP spokesman insisted to Rolling Stone that this action is "nothing new" and that there is "no new policy." But the unusual – and legally questionable – search of domestic travelers comes days after the Department of Homeland Security outlined its plans to implement President Trump's sweeping executive order targeting millions of "removable aliens" for deportation.
Upon deplaning from Delta Flight 1583 in New York, passenger Anne Garrett tweeted, "We were told we couldn't disembark without showing our 'documents.'"
View image on Twitter
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Another passenger, Matt O'Rourke, snapped a similar picture. O'Rourke tells Rolling Stone that the Delta flight attendant alerted passengers, "You'll need to show your papers to agents waiting outside the door."
"She was weirded out by it," he says. The agents, O'Rourke says, said nothing to him, but took his ID and scrutinized it for nearly 30 seconds before letting him pass. He describes the experience as "a little bit alarming." Only later did O'Rourke find himself asking, "Why is a customs agent doing this search? The flight didn't enter from another country."
In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for CBP said the agency had been asked "to assist in locating an individual possibly aboard Delta flight 1583" who had been "ordered removed by an immigration judge." The spokesman added that CBP agents "requested identification from those on the flight" but that ultimately "[t]he individual was determined not to be on the flight."
Rolling Stone asked CBP to point to its statutory authority to stop and examine the identity documents of deplaning domestic passengers. The spokesman sent a link to a document titled CBP Search Authority. The document refers to CBP's authority to inspect international arrivals. Specifically, it cites 19 C.F.R. 162.6, which states, "All persons, baggage and merchandise arriving in the Customs territory of the United States from places outside thereof are liable to inspection by a CBP officer." The CBP document adds:
"CBP has the authority to collect passenger name record information on all travelers entering or leaving the United States."(Emphasis added.)
Asked to clarify CBP's authority over domestic passengers, the spokesman replied that "at this time this is all I have."
Rolling Stone asked CBP to clarify whether the CBP document search was truly a "request" – or instead a legally binding demand by the agents. The spokesman again could not clarify CBP's legal authority, warning only, "It is always best to cooperate with law enforcement, so as to expedite your exiting the airport in a timely manner."
Rolling Stone asked the New York Civil Liberties Union for its understanding of the law in this incident. NYCLU Staff Attorney Jordan Wells writes that "CBP does not have carte blanche to refuse to let people off a domestic flight until they show ID." His advice: "While one may choose to produce identity documents to avoid further hassle, it is important to remember that in the United States people have a constitutionally protected right to remain silent."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...irport-w468643
Federal agents searching for immigrant ask domestic flight passengers to show IDs
February 23, 2017
Wesley Lowery
The Washington Post
U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed Thursday that their agents requested to see the identification of domestic flight passengers landing at a New York airport Wednesday night as they searched for an undocumented immigrant who had received a deportation order to leave the United States.
According to the agency, two CBP agents asked passengers who had been on Delta Flight 1583 from San Francisco to show their identification while deplaning after landing at John F. Kennedy Airport at about 8 p.m. Wednesday. The search was conducted at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CBP said in a statement, but the person they were seeking was not on the flight.
A CBP spokesperson said that the undocumented individual, who they did not publicly identify, received a deportation order after multiple criminal convictions for domestic assault, driving while impaired, and violating a protective order.
The search prompted several passengers to post photos online, and it raised questions about whether it was connected to current federal law enforcement efforts to locate, detain and deport undocumented immigrants - a push that has intensified at the direction of President Trump.
A spokesperson for Delta did not respond to a request for comment.
Jordan Wells, a staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that law enforcement officials sometimes board airplanes to apprehend a suspect or a fugitive, he said it would be unusual for authorities to wait outside an arriving airplane and to ask for identification for each passenger.
"They'll occasionally pull someone off of a flight, or officers will come on and make an arrest," Wells said. "It's a much more surgical thing than setting up a dragnet. That's what is so alarming about the way that this played out."
It is unclear what would have happened had officials found other undocumented immigrants getting off the airplane and whether they would have faced deportation if identified. It is also unclear what would have happened to any passenger who refused to produce his or her identification for the agents.
"Is this a mere request to see identification?" Wells said. "Would they have been detained but for them showing ID? Because then it's no longer a consensual encounter and the Constitution enters the equation."
Under the Obama administration, ICE had been instructed to prioritize finding and deporting undocumented immigrants with prior criminal convictions - as it appears the effort with the Delta flight Wednesday night was trying to do.
Under President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has issued new guidelines to ICE and CBP that further empower federal agents to target, detain and deport any of the millions of immigrants currently in the United States without documentation, including those without past criminal convictions. Those policy changes have sparked fear in immigrant communities nationwide.
A DHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an active law enforcement investigation said that such searches and collaboration between CBP and ICE such as the one on Wednesday evening are routine and are not new measures due to increased immigration enforcement.
"When we're asked by our law enforcement partners to assist in searching for a person of interest, we are able to, and will, help," the official said. "This isn't a new policy or related to any new executive order."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...223-story.html
