Immigration

Lawsuit: Border Agents Placing Cameras on Private Property

Written by SK Ashby

Customs and Border Protection agents have the authority to enter private property within 25 miles of the border to carry out their official duties, but they've been going much further than that according to a new lawsuit filed in federal court.

A retired attorney who owns a ranch in Texas has filed a lawsuit against Customs and Border Protection and the Texas Rangers because, in addition to routinely trespassing on his property which is 35 miles from the border, they also placed a remote camera on his property without his knowledge or consent.

The rancher removed the camera when he discovered it and authorities threatened to arrest to him.

via ArsTechnica:

Palacios, who had run-ins with local CBP agents going back several years, took the camera as the last straw. He was tired of agents routinely trespassing on his land, and, even after complaining several times, he was frustrated that his grievances were not being heard.

As a possible way to ward off the threat of arrest, he sued the two agencies, along with a named CPB agent, Mario Martinez. Palacios accused them of trespass and of violating his constitutional rights. [...]

"Plaintiffs maintain that there is something creepy and un-American about such clandestine, surreptitious, 1984-style behavior on the part of Defendants—officers of the law," Palacios argues in the complaint.

This obviously raises the question if border patrol agents have also placed cameras on the private property of countless other people without their knowledge and possibly outside their 25 mile area of jurisdiction.

I am not a single-issue voter but, more than possibly anything else, I want to see Democrats launch a rotorooter investigation of immigration authorities the next time they have control of oversight in Congress. I want Customs and Border Patrol turned inside out. I want to see ICE exposed as a lawless posse of racist brownshirts.