News from The Constitution-Free Zone: Border Patrol Using Biometrics for “Citizenship Checks” in Maine

By Joe Wright

For a number of years now, I have been chronicling the ever-widening use of “The Constitution-Free Zone” by Border Patrol agents in the name of immigration enforcement.

• Papers Please: “Daily Citizenship Checks” on Buses Across Maine Highlight Constitution-Free Zone
• New York’s Constitution-Free Zone Leading to Warrantless Bus Searches and Detentions
• Greyhound Bus Under Fire As More Reports Of Immigration Searches and Detentions Surface
• Citizenship Checkpoints Start to Spread Across The Constitution-Free Zone

The label of “Constitution Free” was given by the ACLU to describe the area that extends 100 miles from the border around the entire United States and holds nearly 70% of the total U.S. population. It is still not understood by most people that while traveling in this zone, you have next to no rights … at least according to Customs and Border Protection agents.

It is disturbing enough that agents have been exposed for targeting people with foreign accents for interrogation, as well as engaging in a general dragnet of the population on many of the most popular travel lines.  However, a new report from Maine ups the ante even further, as it appears that Border Patrol has now implemented mobile biometrics devices to link up with databases in order to find immigration offenders during “citizenship checks.” My emphasis added:

On Sunday, border patrol agents arrested a man in Auburn during a check after he was reported to be “acting in an elusive manner and provided multiple names and dates of births to officers in order to avoid identification.”

Agents used a mobile biometric device, which uses fingerprints, facial recognition and voice recognition to identify the man as a Mexican national who entered the country illegally in 2010, and later found he had been ordered removed from the United States by a judge in 2016. A warrant for his deportation was issued in 2017, and he had allegedly been living under aliases across the country since.

Source: Press Herald

For anyone who supports this type of invasion, you also should be comfortable with the fact that this exact type of screening has directly trickled down to the U.S. from Afghanistan where it was used by the U.S. military to screen the public there for potential links to terrorism.

Credit: Wired

Supporters of a military police state also should know that they are not immune, as the profiling that they also tend to support will not be used, but includes all of the presumed innocent as well.

Niezgoda said that during these checks, agents patrol an area and ask everyone they see for citizenship information.

“People assume they’re going to profile people, but they don’t,” he said. “They ask everyone.”

It is slowly beginning to dawn on (reasonable) people that when you restrict the freedoms of certain groups, that arbitrary system of oppression eventually boomerangs back upon you. I cite world history as irrefutable evidence, because I think deep down we know how this show ends.

You can find more from Joe Wright at Activist Post, where this article first appeared.

H/T: MassPrivateI

Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Follow us on Minds, Twitter, Steemit, and SoMee. Become an Activist Post Patron for as little as $1 per month.

Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today.