Thursday, February 23, 2017

Welcome to "Papers Please!" America


The Washington Post reports:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed Thursday that their agents requested to see the identification of domestic flight passengers landing at a New York airport Wednesday night as they searched for an undocumented immigrant who had received a deportation order to leave the United States.

According to the agency, two CBP agents asked passengers who had been on Delta Flight 1583 from San Francisco to show their identification while deplaning after landing at John F. Kennedy Airport at about 8 p.m. Wednesday. The search was conducted at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CBP said in a statement, but the person they were seeking was not on the flight.

A CBP spokesperson said that the undocumented individual, who they did not publicly identify, received a deportation order after multiple criminal convictions for domestic assault, driving while impaired, and violating a protective order.

The search prompted several passengers to post photos online, and it raised questions about whether it was connected to current federal law enforcement efforts to locate, detain and deport undocumented immigrants — a push that has intensified at the direction of President Trump.

A spokesperson for Delta did not respond to a request for comment.

Jordan Wells, a staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that law enforcement officials sometimes board airplanes to apprehend a suspect or a fugitive, he said it would be unusual for authorities to wait outside an arriving airplane and to ask for identification for each passenger.

“They’ll occasionally pull someone off of a flight, or officers will come on and make an arrest,” Wells said. “It’s a much more surgical thing than setting up a dragnet. That’s what is so alarming about the way that this played out.”


6 comments:

  1. Story and Twitter posts are in conflict. Did they force people to ID, or did they request ID?

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    1. I don't see a conflict. Ask is code for force. Like how Hillary said 'we will ask the rich to contribute.'

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    2. Legally, with law enforcement, ask/request is VERY different from force/make/require. It's the distinction between voluntary interaction and being detained.

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    3. Force or request is the same for many leos. First they request, then if you don't submit, they use force. Kind of like how the government requests that you file taxes.

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    4. It's very easy to force compliance with a request. Simply make refusal socially unacceptable. Make those who refuse the target of the ire of all those people in line behind him. Delay and slow the entire process when someone refuses. If he is alone then they can simply just abuse the person who refuses with detainments, delays, and so on.


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  2. They are in the process of erasing every step on the road to freedom that occurred after 664 AD, the new dark age is announcing that the life we knew is about to be annihilated.

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