VAPA,
I was not offended by your disagreement - that is an integral part of debate. I was peeved by the unanswerable question you posed (Can you quote what the driver said that the agents couldn't hear?), which only the BP agents could answer with certainty.
I do recognize that it is possible that the agents might not have heard everything the driver said, as explained by the BP supervisor in
Video #4 @ 4:08: "I know you may be able to hear us just fine, but we have a lot of traffic out here, there is the highway noise, there is traffic behind you. If you could roll down your window - I can understand you may not want to roll it all the way down, but at least enough that we can communicate with you."
As to the basic premise of who was right and who was wrong, both the driver and the BP succeeded in being disastrously wrong.
Brief detention for questioning about citizenship status at a checkpoint is not a Fourth Amendment violation.
U.S. Supreme Court -
UNITED STATES v. MARTINEZ-FUERTE - The Border Patrol's routine stopping of a vehicle at a permanent checkpoint located on a major highway away from the Mexican border
for brief questioning of the vehicle's occupants is consistent with the Fourth Amendment.
"While the need to make routine checkpoint stops is great, the consequent intrusion on Fourth Amendment interests is quite limited. The stop does intrude to a limited extent on motorists' right to "free passage without [428 U.S. 543, 558] interruption," Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 154 (1925), and arguably on their right to personal security. But it involves only a brief
detention of travelers during which
"`[a]ll that is required of the vehicle's occupants is a response to a brief question or two and possibly the production of a document evidencing a right to be in the United States.'" United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, supra, at 880."
The BP messed up grandly by not asking about citizenship status before sending the driver to secondary. (
Video 1 @ 0:26)
The driver messed up by thinking he did not have to get out of his car when ordered to do so immediately upon being approached by the BP agents in secondary. (
Video 1 @ 1:36: "For what? You haven't told me anything and now you're making me exit my vehicle.")
U.S. Supreme Court -
PENNSYLVANIA v. MIMMS - The order to get out of the car, issued after the respondent was lawfully detained, was reasonable and thus permissible under the Fourth Amendment.
The BP agents also took a cheap shot at the driver by contacting his CO. Anyone who has been associated with the military knows that the military does not take kindly to officers becoming involved in political issues, and testing the limits of the law, or trying to establish a basis to contest a law, falls in that category.
Nevertheless, the driver invited repercussions by deliberately involving himself in actions that he knew were frowned on by the military.
I was glad to see that the driver's subsequent foray (
April 10 video) through the checkpoint was without incident.