D.V.I.: Package shipped from SC to VI did not cross “border”

Defendant mailing packages from South Carolina to the Virgin Islands under an alias has standing because the government alleges the alias on the package is defendant. The sealed packages have Fourth Amendment protection and a reasonable expectation of privacy. The court holds that V.I. status as a territory of the United States means that the border search exception does not apply to packages sent from the mainland. The court analyzed the status of the V.I. from purchase from the Dutch in 1917, and the package remained within the U.S. United States v. Baxter, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 199234 (D. V.I. Nov. 26, 2018):

It is axiomatic that those things that originate in, and stay within, the territory of the United States remain free from border searches. A central point highlighted by the Supreme Court in its border search jurisprudence is that items subject to a border search enter the country “from without it.” See id. (emphasis added); see also Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 272 (1973) (“‘Travellers may be so stopped in crossing an international boundary because of national self protection reasonably requiring one entering the country to identify himself as entitled to come in, and his belongings as effects which may be lawfully brought in.'” (quoting Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 154 (1925)). The sealed packages that arrived in the United States Virgin Islands did not come from “without” the country.