Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, PJ Schuster, Michael Catlett, Frances, Honey Badger, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Today I want to talk about ICE traffic stops, because there is a lot of confusion out there. This is partially due to the media repeating ICE talking points and not bothering to give anyone else outside of the immigration enforcement agencies a say – many in the media ingest ICE propaganda and simply regurgitate it for their viewers. The confusion is also caused intentionally by ICE, CBP and Border Patrol who keep many of their policies hidden under “law enforcement sensitive” national security seals. When killings and violence like we have seen lately occur, the leadership of these agencies rely on their bosses at DHS, politicians and right-wing media to respond with political messaging and outright lies about the facts. In other words, the leadership of these agencies hide from accountability and instead send out their talking heads like Tom Homan who is the current Border Czar, which is a political position. Remember, I am not a lawyer. My opinions come from my criminal law degree, my experience as a former Border Patrol agent and my research and study of these agencies over the last decade. When I refer to ICE, I am also referring to CBP and Border Patrol as they are leading this mass deportation that has brought them to middle America. What is the legal authority for immigration stops? Contrary to this administration’s beliefs, ICE does not have the authority to stop people for basic traffic violations. Immigration agents do have the authority to make traffic stops for suspicion of immigration, customs and narcotics violations as well as crimes associated with terrorism. They can also make vehicle stops if they see a person commit a serious felony that is outside of this authority such as if they see you run over a person. However, immigration agents do not have the legal authority to stop people for traffic violations. If an immigration agent stops a car for a taillight being out or any traffic violation, that stop is illegal. If they stop you for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, that stop is also not within their authority and will be thrown out by the courts. As an agent, I have seen this happen many times. Where this gets sticky is when immigration agents work with state and local police who do have the legal authority to make traffic violation stops. After 9/11, Congress created Joint Terrorism Task Forces or JTTFs. These teams were created with the concept of preventing another terrorist attack. One of the main complaints law enforcement had back then was that they were unable to stop the terrorists because various agencies could not communicate or share intelligence with each other. To be clear, it was never that they could not share intelligence, it was simply that they had to get a court’s approval to share that information. In other words, they had to develop a case and go through checks and balances before sharing that information - something the immigration agencies hate to do. The JTTFs generally did away with this requirement. Additionally, this combined joint task force of federal, state and local police meant that various agencies with different authorities were combined into one unit. This was problematic for the teams who wanted everyone on the team to have the same authorities. So, they were allowed to “share authorities.” This meant that if I as a Border Patrol agent happened to be on a task force with a local police department, I could engage in traffic stops for traffic violations or do knock and talks (which are knocking on a door and requesting to speak with a resident without a warrant); these are authorities not held by Border Patrol agents. This and 287G contracts with ICE are how your state and local police have suddenly gained immigration powers that they did not have before. This is one way in which immigration agents are getting around their limited authority issue. The main way ICE justifies traffic stops is simply by racially profiling for immigration violations. Within one hundred miles of any land or water border, immigration agents have the legal authority to use racial profiling to conduct traffic stops for immigration purposes. While a hundred miles may not seem to cover most of the United States, it does cover two-thirds of the population. The entire state of Maine is under this rule. This rule was recently upheld by the Supreme Court and because Justice Kavanaugh wrote the decision, they have been termed “Kavanaugh stops.” According to Kavanaugh, these immigration stops are brief, non-intrusive and living in a city where many undocumented people are suspected of living is enough reasonable suspicion. In other words, if you happen to live in an area where undocumented people live, then you are also subject to these stops that violate your Fourth Amendment rights to unreasonable searches. What Kavanaugh does not consider is how these stops occur outside the confines of the cushy Supreme Court. In real life, what we are seeing under Trump’s mass deportation are immigration agents using the constant sharing of authorities to stop people based on powers they do not legally have such as stopping people for traffic violations, not conducting immigration inspections at the scene, brutality, kidnapping and then dumping of victims. These are a terrorist tactics and not legal or professional law enforcement tactics, meant to create fear in communities, plain and simple. Additionally, while immigration agents are trained in the academies that they need to develop their reasonable suspicion before they attempt to stop a car as the law requires, the training in the field differs greatly from the official academy training. While agents do receive additional yearly training through their agencies, it is often incomplete and not like the academy training. Some of this after academy training is provided by private contractors who are often ex-agents or police officers who are biased and not lawyers well-versed in the law. This training often teaches how to get away with illegal stuff, and there is no oversight into this training. And since immigration agents have been allowed to do these kinds of stops for generations on the southern border without repercussions or accountability, they expect they will be allowed to continue to do so all across the country. So, what should a normal traffic stop for an immigration violation look like versus what is really going on? Stops conducted for the purpose of an immigration check are considered routine stops. A routine stop is one in which the agent believes a civil immigration violation has occurred and not a criminal violation. It is the same type of stop done when a local police officer stops you for failing to yield or crossing over the double white line. It is not a stop for a serious criminal offense but for a civil administrative violation. The agent is to notify dispatch of their location and the description and plate of the car. They turn on their red and blue lights and maybe give a chirp or two of their sirens if the driver does not see them. The agent then safely exists their car and approaches the stopped vehicle from a safe angle, often from the passenger’s side. The agent then identifies themselves as a federal agent and asks the person to state their citizenship. If they are not a U.S. citizen, they are asked for their immigration documents. That’s it. While a routine traffic stop can escalate into a high-risk stop, the initial reason for the stop should be handled in this manner unless circumstances change. The pattern and practice shown in the last eighteen months through analyzing court cases is that ICE stops vehicles without any reasonable suspicion for immigration violations other than the racial profiling element. The reason why I say this is because they have stated that is exactly what they are doing and have not been able to provide any other reason. In the most recent ICE killing of Johan Duran Guerrero in Maine, the agent stated he was surveilling a subject when he saw Johan drive by and decided to stop him. No reason has been given for this immigration stop other than that he looked undocumented, which is another way of saying he was Brown. This was racial profiling as this agent did not stop every car that passed him – he stopped the car with a Brown driver. Neither DHS nor ICE has given a public statement as to the reason Johan was stopped. What they have claimed was that Johan tried to run over Agent David Brouillette and then claimed he had to shoot and kill Johan because he was fleeing the scene and he feared for public safety. Note that the question of why the agent chose to stop this car is not being addressed. They do not want to answer the why of the stop because if the stop was illegal, everything the agent did after the stop was illegal as well. That means the shooting would possibly be unjustified. This same scenario is seen in the Lorenzo Salgado Araujo ICE killing that occurred in Houston, Texas during the same week. When asked why he was stopped, agents claimed they were surveilling another person when they saw Lorenzo drive by in a van that was the same color as the one they were surveilling. That is some weak sauce, but it a common tactic used by the immigration agencies. It is sort of a nexus to real criminal activity that they then use to justify other unrelated stops; that van looked like the van we were targeting even though the license plates were different and Lorenzo was not the man they were looking for. When asked why he was shot, the agency claimed Lorenzo tried to run over the agents. Once again, they cannot justify the stop legally and they go straight to the agent’s life was in danger answer to justify the shooting and make the press back down. Whenever their actions a
