Reason.com: SCOTUS Declines Opportunity to Limit Random Border Patrol Stops

Reason.com: SCOTUS Declines Opportunity to Limit Random Border Patrol Stops by Jacob Sullum:

The Court’s decision leaves motorists vulnerable to the whims of armed government agents who can stop them at will.

Today the Supreme Court passed up an opportunity to impose limits on a disturbing exception to the Fourth Amendment that allows random detention of motorists within 100 miles of a border—a zone that includes two-thirds of the U.S. population. Since the rationale for these stops is immigration enforcement, they are supposed to be very brief. Yet in 2010 Richard Rynearson, an Air Force officer who brought the case that the Court today declined to hear, was detained at a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint in Uvalde County, Texas, for a total of 34 minutes, even though there was no reason to believe he was an illegal alien or a criminal.

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