Portland Press Herald
- U.S. Border Patrol agents conducted an 11-hour vehicle checkpoint on
Interstate 95 in eastern Maine, stopping southbound vehicles near
Lincoln in Penobscot County to ask drivers and passengers for their
citizenship and immigration status, and to search vehicles with sniffer
dogs.
Agents from the Houlton Border Patrol sector manned the
checkpoint, arresting a man from Haiti and seizing drugs. Border Patrol
said it didn’t keep track of how many vehicles the agents stopped.
Civil
rights groups have sharply criticized the practice of snap immigration
inspections on highways and bus stations, and said some of the checks
are unconstitutional.
The American Civil Liberties Union suspects
inspections have become more common during the Trump administration,
and in May it sued the U.S. government for records related to
immigration enforcement efforts.
“We should all be able to live
our lives without being stopped by immigration agents every time we
board a bus or drive down the highway,” said Emma Bond, a staff attorney
with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. “Having (Border
Patrol) constantly intruding on our lives and demanding that we show our
papers doesn’t make us any safer, but it will make us less free.”
No comments:
Post a Comment