<story><title>The Engineer vs. the Border Patrol</title><url>https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/terry-bressi-wants-to-take-customs-and-border-protections-internal-immigration-checkpoints-to-the-supreme-court.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasonwatkinspdx</author><text>A friend was in a similar situation for a while: crossing a CBP checkpoint multiple times every day for work in south Texas.&lt;p&gt;At some point he decided to try to stand up for what he considered his rights in a similar way: not being combative, just not cooperating. He was thrown in jail for 3 days, then the charges were dropped.&lt;p&gt;He talked with lawyers and the ACLU. The ACLU were quite frank that they have limited resources, and so they have to prioritize cases that have the ideal defendant and political optics. If he fought it personally, the cost would start at five figures.&lt;p&gt;The folks doing this &lt;i&gt;know&lt;/i&gt; there&amp;#x27;s a high barrier to holding them accountable and leverage it wantonly.&lt;p&gt;The worst thing about these &amp;quot;contempt of cop&amp;quot; style arrests is, despite the charges being dropped, once you&amp;#x27;re in the system&amp;#x27;s pipeline, if you mess up about any of the restrictions, paperwork, court appearances, etc, you become a criminal. It&amp;#x27;s easy to imagine a lot of folks might fall into that trap for innocent and mundane reasons.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Spearchucker</author><text>As a not-American stories like this make the very country itself seem like the blueprint followed by the tech giants. Illegally bullying the public at large, too big to punish, let alone reign in. It&amp;#x27;s not an ideal image, is it? And most depressing is that there&amp;#x27;s not a damn thing Joe average can do about it.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Engineer vs. the Border Patrol</title><url>https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/terry-bressi-wants-to-take-customs-and-border-protections-internal-immigration-checkpoints-to-the-supreme-court.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jasonwatkinspdx</author><text>A friend was in a similar situation for a while: crossing a CBP checkpoint multiple times every day for work in south Texas.&lt;p&gt;At some point he decided to try to stand up for what he considered his rights in a similar way: not being combative, just not cooperating. He was thrown in jail for 3 days, then the charges were dropped.&lt;p&gt;He talked with lawyers and the ACLU. The ACLU were quite frank that they have limited resources, and so they have to prioritize cases that have the ideal defendant and political optics. If he fought it personally, the cost would start at five figures.&lt;p&gt;The folks doing this &lt;i&gt;know&lt;/i&gt; there&amp;#x27;s a high barrier to holding them accountable and leverage it wantonly.&lt;p&gt;The worst thing about these &amp;quot;contempt of cop&amp;quot; style arrests is, despite the charges being dropped, once you&amp;#x27;re in the system&amp;#x27;s pipeline, if you mess up about any of the restrictions, paperwork, court appearances, etc, you become a criminal. It&amp;#x27;s easy to imagine a lot of folks might fall into that trap for innocent and mundane reasons.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>djsumdog</author><text>The biggest problem in trying to stand up against it is US v. Martinez-Fuerte, effectively making these stops legal at the federal&amp;#x2F;constitution level.&lt;p&gt;The only way to fight it would be a heavily organized protest; enough people that they couldn&amp;#x27;t arrest everyone&amp;#x2F;would fill the jails.</text></comment>