Port Townsend City Council Adopts Border Patrol Resolution

[uppityperson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fYD7Rkz5QM

On June first of 2009 the Port Townsend City Council Passed a resolution expressing a number of legal and policy concerns over the expansion of the Border Patrol Activity on the Olympic Peninsula, in particular the random checkpoints on highways away from the border itself. The resolution provides for a number of different actions or requests. It requests that the Border Patrol's activities be suspended until the utility and legality of the activities can be determined. It calls on local law enforcement officers to continue to uphold their oaths to protect the rights and liberties of members of the community and urges elected officials to foster a reformed approach to securing the border which focuses on interdiction at the border at the same time preserving Constitutional protection as well as respecting local law enforcement.

Edited to add article:
http://www.ptleader.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=24411&TM=65787.45

6/5/2009
City of Port Townsend seeks 'suspension' of Border Patrol activities here; 6-1 vote asks Obama, Congress to review legality, 'opportunity costs' of checkpoints and other tactics

By Barney Burke of The Leader

The Port Townsend City Council is sending a resolution to President Obama and Congress asking for a suspension of expanded U.S. Border Patrol on the Olympic Peninsula pending a review of the utility and legality of those practices. Adopted 6-1 on June 1 with Laurie Medlicott voting "no," the resolution also calls for "a reformed approach toward securing our border which focuses on interdiction at the border, preserves constitutional protections and respects local law enforcement."

Jackie Aase, chairwoman of the League of Women Voters of Jefferson County, was the first of 10 speakers on the issue Monday night. She had just returned from the organization's state convention in Tacoma. As a result of that meeting, the league's state organization is lobbying its national group to lobby Congress to investigate the policies of the Border Patrol, she said. "Most people hadn't heard of what was going on over here," Aase said of checkpoints operated on Olympic Peninsula highways last year. That practice - and the practice of contacting people in churches, on buses and in other locations - has been opposed by locals who feel the Border Patrol is not operating within the confines of the Constitution.

Port Townsend resident Carl Nomura spoke of losing his citizenship and being sent to an internment camp during World War II because he is a Japanese American. "I personally have been victimized by the 'reverse law,'" he said, "guilty until proven innocent. Why not let them have a better life," said Nomura of granting amnesty to people who have not immigrated here legally. After 9/11, Nomura continued, he was "profiled" for having brown skin when he tried to board an airplane. "Everybody there was brown," he said of the people detained prior to boarding.

Also addressing the council was Andrew Reding, who works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's asylum program, speaking as a private citizen. Reding said he believes in the agency's goal of stopping terrorism, and much of his job is making sure asylum seekers aren't terrorists. But deporting illegal immigrants is "cruel and heartless," he said. Taymere Perkins spoke up for the Border Patrol and tough immigration policies. He said it's important to make sure immigrants are not criminals, have a means to support themselves, and are free of infectious diseases. His wife immigrated to the United States legally, he noted....(more@link)

[Suich]

1. Finally, a step in the right direction

We'll see what the Border Patrol does. They might tell the Council to go suck an egg.

:hi:

[uppityperson]

2. I just added the article in OP if you want to read more.

[Suich]

4. Thanks!

Have they ever said how many terrorists they've found? How many deportations are they responsible for?

[BlooInBloo]

3. Good job, folks.

[uppityperson]

5. Bunch of radical hippies and patriots and uppity people around here indeed

It's been a big thing here, with random stops, etc. There was a poster in the local transit, paid for ad, talking about if the border patrol stops the bus, what you have to say and don't have to say. There was flak from those who think having an increased presence of border patrol and increasing randoms checks of whomever is a good thing, and a lot of pissed off people on the side of stopping this bs practice.

[imdjh]

6. The internal highway checkpoints have stopped? Good.

My objection isn't to enforced borders, or deporting illegal aliens, it's that US citizens are having their Fourth Amendment rights violated (IMO) by interior checkpoints by the border patrol: those checkpoints which examine vehicles and interrogate citizens who are not only not crossing a US border, but who often aren't even on a road which crosses a US border. I also object to DUI checkpoints.

Unfortunately the USSC disagrees with me.

[uppityperson]

7. Those are the ones that we are protesting.

They can stop people with no cause, within (oh crap my mind has gone blank) some distance from any border, going quite a ways down or up.

No cause. Not crossing any border or on a road to a border.

[imdjh]

8. You forgot it because it's arbitrary, it has no meaning.

I can't remember either, perhaps within 50 miles or 100 miles of the border. The court's logic fails precisely on that point. You are either crossing an international border or you are not- if the Border Patrol can "checkpoint" 100 miles inland, then there is no logical reason why they could not do the same in Des Moines. Borders have different rules because you are entering a country, and that country had a right to know who you are and what your status is. Within this nation, citizens are supposed to be secure in their person, their papers, and their property.

Moreover, if these checkpoints did nothing other than determine citizenship (which they don't actually do) then they would at least be within their mandate. But the videos (and my personal experience) show the BP agents using dogs to sniff the cars. Can a dog smell the difference between an alien and a citizen? Of course not. Dogs are for drugs. Interior checkpoints by the BP with drug dogs clearly have nothing to do with immigration, they are about revenue and statistics.