A Border Patrol bordering on wrong

© 2008 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.

Defining moments are not always of our choosing. Often they appear suddenly, like last week. Because I live in Las Cruces, traveling every direction but south means I have to go through a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint where I am asked my citizenship.

I have gone through these checkpoints thousands of times over four decades and every time been carefully questioned as to my nationality despite the fact that, at the actual U.S. border 60 miles away, millions of illegal people have streamed across relatively unmolested because of the political policies of our leaders.

Last week I was headed to Alamogordo. When I drove up to the checkpoint I declared to the agent before being asked, “I am a United States citizen.”

Several agents were standing there. After I declared my citizenship, an agent asked, “Is this your car?” I said yes. “Is your name on the title to this car?” I said yes. Then he asked, “Where are you going, what are you going to do and when will you return?”

I was slightly discomforted by the question of my 1998 Mercury title since they are the Border Patrol, but I answered without hesitation. Where was I going and what was I going to do when I got there? I immediately saw that these were questions outside of their right to ask.

I looked at the agent and said calmly, “That is constitutionally protected information and I am not going to answer that question.”

The three agents started to puff up at me but the supervisor standing nearby stepped up to my car and said, “You can go.” I said, “Thank you sir,” and drove away.

It was a confrontation of less than 30 seconds, yet it has bothered me ever since. When I mentioned it to my friends they all disagreed with my actions, unanimously of the opinion that whatever a government authority says must be done, constitutional protections be damned.

Further, they said I was a fool to decline to say where I was going, whom I was going to see and when I was returning because the agents could have taken out their displeasure on me, thereby ruining my day. I certainly did not want to anger agents of our government and realize that they could have spent the rest of the day making me sorry that I did not just say I was going to Alamogordo (stating which schools I was going to), to train some teachers (naming each teacher), and that I would return about four that afternoon.

We can’t let the government violate the Constitution

With my German heritage I am more compliant to the rules of the society than most. My friends are always unhappy that I drive sedately down the road and do not speed. It is a law that everyone breaks, they say to me. Not me, I reply.

Despite being inclined to be compliant with my government, I must not allow the government to violate the constitution, even if it inconveniences me. The Constitution of the United States is the rulebook for our government. It is not a rulebook for you and me. It tells the government what it can and cannot do. All of the test cases of the government stepping over the constitutional line started when someone said, “Hey, that is not right.”

Are we to do what any member of the government tells us without exception? Or is it like the allies asserted in the Nuremberg trials that people must not blindly follow their government when they think the government action is not right?

I am not saying any of this was like what the Nazis did during World War II, but it is the same principle. My relationship with my government works both ways: There are things I can and cannot do and the same for my government.

Recently our local jail was hammered by the court system for conducting strip-searches on people who were detained but not convicted of a crime. Lots of money changed hands and it changed its policy.

A slippery slope

If we reveal where we are going and what are we going to do when the police and Border Patrol ask, how soon will it be before we have to call a number and give this information every time we intend to leave our house? I cannot accept this as the purview of the government. We do not have to do it now, but that is an extension of exactly the same request by the Border Patrol.

The day I have to call some government information center before I leave my house to share where I am going and when I will return and then call when I get home — essentially becoming a teenager living in my parents’ house — I will leave this country.

Each of us must decide what our government can and cannot do. My friends say they have been uncomfortable with questions about where they were going at Border Patrol checkpoints but were afraid to resist. That is their right to not resist. There were many people at the local jail strip-searched, their dignity taken from them, and it was their right to not protest. Finally the government policy was reversed because some people just would not keep quiet.

I will not lose my dignity and constitutional protections without a fight.

Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.