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It is insane to me that judges consistently rule that the constitution doesn't apply because there's a "border" within 100 miles. The 4th Amendment says, exact

by mmh0000 10d ago

It is insane to me that judges consistently rule that the constitution doesn't apply because there's a "border" within 100 miles. The 4th Amendment says, exactly: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. I do not know how that could be unclear. My cellphone is my effect, and arguably, also a "paper". Which SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED. But apparently, I'm too dumb to understand the sentence[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Border_search_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United...

esafak 10d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception apparently
flerchin 10d ago
Yeah the plain language is unambiguous. That there is an historical border search exception simply doesn't matter to me. We fought a war for this, and it's bullshit.
rtkwe 10d ago
So the main argument is that in the time that was written and immediately afterwards we can look to see what they mean by that by how it was implemented. At the time it was understood that the government could and would search goods as they enter the country without warrants to enforce things like tariffs. I think that's a fairly reasonable interpretation of the meaning. Where I think this goes wrong (and maybe deviates from history?) is the conflation of papers and other digital records now with physical goods, historically were people's papers searched as they entered the country (beyond say looking through them to find hidden goods, I mean reading and examining letters and records)?
- alistairSH 10d ago
  But the 100 mile rule? That covers damn near everybody in the US (>200 million, or 66%, give or take) subject to warrantless searches on the whim of whatever the police want?
  - EGreg 10d ago
    Yeah, where does this come from? Who keeps defending this, has it been challenged? About 213 million people live in this zone, so 2/3 of people in the USA. So I guess the 4th amendment doesn't actually apply to most US citizens?
    - rtkwe 10d ago
      Two main cases and the interpretation there-of [0]. The most expansive interpretation of the 100 mile zone that includes all coastal areas hasn't really been tested and AFAIK CBP mostly uses it in a more justifiable area around land borders so far relying on other justifications for more inland operations. [0] ^f Supreme Court: https://forumtogether.org/article/explainer-u-s-border-patrol-authorities-and-the-100-mile-border-zone/ https://forumtogether.org/article/explainer-u-s-border-patro...
  - SoftTalker 10d ago
    It's more than that, it's being "close" to a border (you can argue if 100 miles is "close") and not on a whim but reason to believe you recently crossed it.
    - CamperBob2 10d ago
      I've heard (but can't back up) that any city with an international airport counts as a 'border' for this purpose.
      - SoftTalker 10d ago
        Probably. If international flights are arriving, why wouldn't it?
dmoy 10d ago
I mean... yea we also have some shaky interpretations of the 1st amendment (see especially, assembly), 2nd, 5th (e.g. the incredible pressure for plea bargaining), 6th (which, paradoxically, is a major reason for aforementioned pressure on plea bargaining, so I kinda get it), 8th given how bad some prisons are, arguably 10th (even if I am personally not a fan of the 10th amendment so much), and arguably still the 15th (though it's obviously orders of magnitude better than the first 100 years of its existence). And also various other parts of the construction, like the interstate commerce clause does some comically heavy lifting.
ReptileMan 10d ago
If you torture the US constitution enough it will eventually confess. There are a lot of issues that fail the constitutional grep test yet somehow they are deemed (un)constitutional. The constitution was written to protect the people and states from the overly zealous congress. Not to fix the situation in which the congress is so dysfunctional that the judiciary has to replace it.
ghusto 10d ago
Do constitutional rights apply to non-citizens? I always thought the constitution of the USA was for USA citizens, but then I'm not from the USA and am watching all this from very far away.
- wat10000 10d ago
  Most of them do. The Constitution is clear on when it talks about citizens versus all people. The exceptions are things like the right to vote or hold federal office.
- Zak 10d ago
  Most of them do. They're usually constructed as restrictions on the government's authority rather than grants of rights to a specific group of people, and there are court rulings clearly stating rights like freedom of speech and freedom from unreasonable search apply to any person subject to the government's authority. Non-citizens don't get the right to bear arms as far as I know.
  - asdfasvea 9d ago
    This *1000. It's a supreme failure on our educational system and society at large that most Americans don't think about our government and our rights in these terms. The Constitution actually takes away our rights. It has to, it lays out the powers the government has over us. Even the bill of rights doesn't technically give us rights---it explicitly details the ways our government cannot operate.
    - rexpop 9d ago
      I've made this point on this forum before. These are natural rights. The constitution, as you say, delineates state powers as a necessary infringement upon those rights.
  - deleted 9d ago
    [deleted]
- stackskipton 10d ago
wat10000 10d ago
The word "unreasonable" leaves the entire thing up to interpretation. Is it "reasonable" to search a traveler's phone with no indication of any wrongdoing? You'd probably say no. I'd say no. The courts say yes. Neither answer is objectively right or wrong according to this text.
bshaughn 10d ago
Also crazy that lake michigan counts as the border, despite being entirely in the US, so you could be minding your business in Fort Wayne, Indiana and have your phone searched for no reason.
- maxerickson 9d ago
  You can complete a water crossing by phone or so (so like in some random harbor in Wiscansin). That doesn't justify a random search of course, but if there was some reason to believe that you were importing something illegal they could come search ya boat.
Zak 10d ago
> It is insane to me that judges consistently rule that the constitution doesn't apply because there's a "border" within 100 miles. People keep misconstruing this. The border search exemption only applies when someone is actually crossing a border, and it does grant broad authority to search whatever they're carrying with them at the time. The authority to do border enforcement within a 100-mile zone around borders does not grant a broad authority to search. It does grant a narrow authority to do things like traffic checkpoints, but those don't permit searches for anything smaller than a person without additional evidence. I do think the ruling establishing the authority to run checkpoints other than actual border crossings was wrongly decided and harmful, but it's not what's at issue in this case.
- gpt5 10d ago
  To add to that, the ruling intentionally did not make a decision on two important distinctions: 1. Forcing you to unlock - in this case, Alisigwe unlocked their phone willingly after being asked. 2. Forensic extraction - the ruling does not give authorities the power to run a sophisticated off-site break-in on your phone without reasonable suspicion. So if you are a US citizen, and you are willingly unlocking your phone at the border (or you don't have a passcode), the Fourth Amendment no longer protect you from a suspicionless manual search of the phone at the border
  - FireBeyond 10d ago
    But what they can do is confiscate your phone, _image_ it, without the access attempt, and keep the phone as evidence until or unless they feel the need to apply for a warrant for the access.
    - gpt5 9d ago
      No. They cannot keep the phone, and they cannot copy the phone data without reasonable suspicion under this ruling (connecting the phone to an external device to copy is considered advanced forensic and already has case law around it).
swerner 10d ago
Proximity to borders leaves the government the possibility that if it really, really wanted to search a property, they'd just have to cede some land in a 100mile radius to a foreign country and instantly create an international border wherever they need one.
mywittyname 10d ago
We gave the government the ability to police itself and there's no punishments for poor rulings. The structure of the Supreme Court is foolish. It made sense initially, having the people who drafted the constitution adjudicate it. But I think it would be better to drop SCOTUS all together, letting the Federal courts sort out their disagreements via consensus. Or have a review panel setup like the House (elected, population based) who have the ability to override rulings and censure/discipline judges who make poor rulings. Either way, we need more people involved in the process.
throw0101a 9d ago
> It is insane to me that judges consistently rule that the constitution doesn't apply because there's a "border" within 100 miles. 100 miles (160 km) covers about two-thirds (66%) of the US population: * https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone

by mmh0000 10d ago

esafak 10d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception apparently

flerchin 10d ago

Yeah the plain language is unambiguous. That there is an historical border search exception simply doesn't matter to me. We fought a war for this, and it's bullshit.

rtkwe 10d ago

So the main argument is that in the time that was written and immediately afterwards we can look to see what they mean by that by how it was implemented. At the time it was understood that the government could and would search goods as they enter the country without warrants to enforce things like tariffs. I think that's a fairly reasonable interpretation of the meaning. Where I think this goes wrong (and maybe deviates from history?) is the conflation of papers and other digital records now with physical goods, historically were people's papers searched as they entered the country (beyond say looking through them to find hidden goods, I mean reading and examining letters and records)?

alistairSH 10d ago
But the 100 mile rule? That covers damn near everybody in the US (>200 million, or 66%, give or take) subject to warrantless searches on the whim of whatever the police want?
- EGreg 10d ago
  Yeah, where does this come from? Who keeps defending this, has it been challenged? About 213 million people live in this zone, so 2/3 of people in the USA. So I guess the 4th amendment doesn't actually apply to most US citizens?
  - rtkwe 10d ago
    Two main cases and the interpretation there-of [0]. The most expansive interpretation of the 100 mile zone that includes all coastal areas hasn't really been tested and AFAIK CBP mostly uses it in a more justifiable area around land borders so far relying on other justifications for more inland operations. [0] ^f Supreme Court: https://forumtogether.org/article/explainer-u-s-border-patrol-authorities-and-the-100-mile-border-zone/ https://forumtogether.org/article/explainer-u-s-border-patro...
- SoftTalker 10d ago
  It's more than that, it's being "close" to a border (you can argue if 100 miles is "close") and not on a whim but reason to believe you recently crossed it.
  - CamperBob2 10d ago
    I've heard (but can't back up) that any city with an international airport counts as a 'border' for this purpose.
    - SoftTalker 10d ago
      Probably. If international flights are arriving, why wouldn't it?

dmoy 10d ago

I mean... yea we also have some shaky interpretations of the 1st amendment (see especially, assembly), 2nd, 5th (e.g. the incredible pressure for plea bargaining), 6th (which, paradoxically, is a major reason for aforementioned pressure on plea bargaining, so I kinda get it), 8th given how bad some prisons are, arguably 10th (even if I am personally not a fan of the 10th amendment so much), and arguably still the 15th (though it's obviously orders of magnitude better than the first 100 years of its existence). And also various other parts of the construction, like the interstate commerce clause does some comically heavy lifting.

ReptileMan 10d ago

If you torture the US constitution enough it will eventually confess. There are a lot of issues that fail the constitutional grep test yet somehow they are deemed (un)constitutional. The constitution was written to protect the people and states from the overly zealous congress. Not to fix the situation in which the congress is so dysfunctional that the judiciary has to replace it.

ghusto 10d ago

Do constitutional rights apply to non-citizens? I always thought the constitution of the USA was for USA citizens, but then I'm not from the USA and am watching all this from very far away.

wat10000 10d ago
Most of them do. The Constitution is clear on when it talks about citizens versus all people. The exceptions are things like the right to vote or hold federal office.
Zak 10d ago
Most of them do. They're usually constructed as restrictions on the government's authority rather than grants of rights to a specific group of people, and there are court rulings clearly stating rights like freedom of speech and freedom from unreasonable search apply to any person subject to the government's authority. Non-citizens don't get the right to bear arms as far as I know.
- asdfasvea 9d ago
  This *1000. It's a supreme failure on our educational system and society at large that most Americans don't think about our government and our rights in these terms. The Constitution actually takes away our rights. It has to, it lays out the powers the government has over us. Even the bill of rights doesn't technically give us rights---it explicitly details the ways our government cannot operate.
  - rexpop 9d ago
    I've made this point on this forum before. These are natural rights. The constitution, as you say, delineates state powers as a necessary infringement upon those rights.
- deleted 9d ago
  [deleted]
stackskipton 10d ago

wat10000 10d ago

The word "unreasonable" leaves the entire thing up to interpretation. Is it "reasonable" to search a traveler's phone with no indication of any wrongdoing? You'd probably say no. I'd say no. The courts say yes. Neither answer is objectively right or wrong according to this text.

bshaughn 10d ago

Also crazy that lake michigan counts as the border, despite being entirely in the US, so you could be minding your business in Fort Wayne, Indiana and have your phone searched for no reason.

maxerickson 9d ago
You can complete a water crossing by phone or so (so like in some random harbor in Wiscansin). That doesn't justify a random search of course, but if there was some reason to believe that you were importing something illegal they could come search ya boat.

Zak 10d ago

> It is insane to me that judges consistently rule that the constitution doesn't apply because there's a "border" within 100 miles. People keep misconstruing this. The border search exemption only applies when someone is actually crossing a border, and it does grant broad authority to search whatever they're carrying with them at the time. The authority to do border enforcement within a 100-mile zone around borders does not grant a broad authority to search. It does grant a narrow authority to do things like traffic checkpoints, but those don't permit searches for anything smaller than a person without additional evidence. I do think the ruling establishing the authority to run checkpoints other than actual border crossings was wrongly decided and harmful, but it's not what's at issue in this case.

gpt5 10d ago
To add to that, the ruling intentionally did not make a decision on two important distinctions: 1. Forcing you to unlock - in this case, Alisigwe unlocked their phone willingly after being asked. 2. Forensic extraction - the ruling does not give authorities the power to run a sophisticated off-site break-in on your phone without reasonable suspicion. So if you are a US citizen, and you are willingly unlocking your phone at the border (or you don't have a passcode), the Fourth Amendment no longer protect you from a suspicionless manual search of the phone at the border
- FireBeyond 10d ago
  But what they can do is confiscate your phone, _image_ it, without the access attempt, and keep the phone as evidence until or unless they feel the need to apply for a warrant for the access.
  - gpt5 9d ago
    No. They cannot keep the phone, and they cannot copy the phone data without reasonable suspicion under this ruling (connecting the phone to an external device to copy is considered advanced forensic and already has case law around it).

swerner 10d ago

Proximity to borders leaves the government the possibility that if it really, really wanted to search a property, they'd just have to cede some land in a 100mile radius to a foreign country and instantly create an international border wherever they need one.

mywittyname 10d ago

We gave the government the ability to police itself and there's no punishments for poor rulings. The structure of the Supreme Court is foolish. It made sense initially, having the people who drafted the constitution adjudicate it. But I think it would be better to drop SCOTUS all together, letting the Federal courts sort out their disagreements via consensus. Or have a review panel setup like the House (elected, population based) who have the ability to override rulings and censure/discipline judges who make poor rulings. Either way, we need more people involved in the process.

throw0101a 9d ago

> It is insane to me that judges consistently rule that the constitution doesn't apply because there's a "border" within 100 miles. 100 miles (160 km) covers about two-thirds (66%) of the US population: * https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone