That's a blatant overstatement of the situation, and is one of the worst bits of misrepresentation ever published by the ACLU (which is usually pretty contentious about this sort of thing).
The "100 miles" rule applies to searches at inland border checkpoints: http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2013/02/does-a-constituti.... DHS is not claiming that the 4th amendment "doesn't apply to anyone within 100 miles of an international border." It claims that:
"The DHS ruling from last Friday said its 'warrantless searches' applied to the U.S. “border and its functional equivalent,” with no mention of the extended 100-mile border."
The claim is that DHS doesn't need a warrant to search at border checkpoints or checkpoints which are the functional equivalent of border checkpoints. All the claim means is that searches don't have to be at the literal border (which might be in the middle of the desert), but can be slightly inland on major thoroughfares that host a lot of cross-border traffic. But it still has to be of the nature of a border search.
It is a totally common-sense policy--nobody ever conceived that the warrant requirement would apply to border searches. Searchers at the border were authorized by the very first Congress (which was full of framers who probably would have known if they had intended the 4th amendment to prevent border searches!) See: http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Border_search_exception#cite_not....
As a past ACLU donor, this is the one bit of agita they sponsor that drives me nuts. There are cases, from decades ago, that establish that the USG cannot conduct warrantless searches under the border search exemption simply because the search occurs within 100 miles of a border.
Half the country (well, half the part of the country that pays attention to this stuff) really believes that they're in a "4th Amendment Free Zone" so long as they're 100 miles of Canada, or an ocean. One worries that some of these people will therefore decide not to refuse searches.
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That's a blatant overstatement of the situation, and is one of the worst bits of misrepresentation ever published by the ACLU (which is usually pretty contentious about this sort of thing).
The "100 miles" rule applies to searches at inland border checkpoints: http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2013/02/does-a-constituti.... DHS is not claiming that the 4th amendment "doesn't apply to anyone within 100 miles of an international border." It claims that:
"The DHS ruling from last Friday said its 'warrantless searches' applied to the U.S. “border and its functional equivalent,” with no mention of the extended 100-mile border."
The claim is that DHS doesn't need a warrant to search at border checkpoints or checkpoints which are the functional equivalent of border checkpoints. All the claim means is that searches don't have to be at the literal border (which might be in the middle of the desert), but can be slightly inland on major thoroughfares that host a lot of cross-border traffic. But it still has to be of the nature of a border search.
It is a totally common-sense policy--nobody ever conceived that the warrant requirement would apply to border searches. Searchers at the border were authorized by the very first Congress (which was full of framers who probably would have known if they had intended the 4th amendment to prevent border searches!) See: http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Border_search_exception#cite_not....
As a past ACLU donor, this is the one bit of agita they sponsor that drives me nuts. There are cases, from decades ago, that establish that the USG cannot conduct warrantless searches under the border search exemption simply because the search occurs within 100 miles of a border.
Half the country (well, half the part of the country that pays attention to this stuff) really believes that they're in a "4th Amendment Free Zone" so long as they're 100 miles of Canada, or an ocean. One worries that some of these people will therefore decide not to refuse searches.