Guide to Border Patrol Checkpoints - View From Baja Arizona

Guide to Border Patrol Checkpoints - View From Baja Arizona: "Federal officers can freely stop vehicles for inspection at these checkpoints without any required level of suspicion or justification. That is the law. Most of these checkpoints have separate areas reserved nearby where a vehicle can then be nearly stripped under what is called “secondary inspection”. The referral of a vehicle to “secondary inspection” needs only to be “selective” and does not require any “reasonable suspicion”.
“It is best if you do not annoy, abuse, alarm, alert, tease, torment, or disturb a Border Patrol Agent at any of these checkpoints.
“Border Patrol Agents cannot and will not take your drivers license away from you. (The federal agent working at a legal Port of Entry can take your driver’s license or almost any other documentation away from you.)
“The Border Patrol Agent will engage you in “consensual conversation”. “Consensual conversation” is not interrogation. Consensual conversation is … conversation.
“Good morning, how are you, that’s a nice gun you have in your pocket”, are all simply one side of a consensual conversation, but in polite society they do require that you make some verbal response."

Posted in: Guide to Border Patrol Checkpoints