From the archives. Originally published August 7, 2013.
Constitution Free Zones are what The Department of Homeland Security has established. The federal agency isn’t really securing the borders, but they are extinguishing the Fourth Amendment rights of nearly 197 million American citizens within 100 miles of the border….and the ocean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqiBNWAbF38
(above video is a replacement of the original video which is no longer available)
Before I begin, isn’t this really what “Freedom of the Press” is supposed to be about? Doesn’t it exist to keep elected officials and things they do in check and expose corruption and lawlessness? Yeah, I thought so too, but we aren’t hearing this on the evening news, are we?
Anthony Gucciardi reports on these “Constitution Free Zones” where law breaking DHS is violating your constitutionally protected rights.
According to Gucciardi, “Within this fabricated ‘border’, the DHS can search your electronic belongings for no reason. We’re talking about no suspicion, no reasonable cause, nothing. No reason whatsoever is required under their own regulations.”
Is DHS above the law of the land? Absolutely not. However, the question I have for Congress is “Why are you guys not reining in this agency and calling out their unconstitutional actions?”
Strangely enough, the border for these Constitution Free Zones includes not only Mexico and Canada, but also states like Oregon, New York, North and South Carolina and various other coastal states, even Alaska! Below is a graphic showing the area in which DHS will take your computer or other electronic devices, search your belongings and shake you down without a warrant and without cause and claim they are within the law.
This has been going on since 2008, which means that under Barack Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, the DHS began to abuse its power more than it had in previous years and under the current administration it has only become normalized.
While the Obama Justice Department wastes its time wondering if they will engage George Zimmerman in double jeopardy and violate the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, they aren’t worried about the clear violations of the Fourth by Homeland Security.
So far, only the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has challenged this. Now, I’m no friend of the ACLU, but on this they are right. They took a case involving a man who was actually detained within the 100 mile border area without cause.
Gucciardi writes,“Not only was this man’s laptop searched for no reason, as is ‘allowed’ under DHS code now, but they ended up finding pictures designated to be linked up with ‘terrorist’ groups. In response, the man was thrown in a cell while DHS agents went through every piece of data on his entire laptop.” The ACLU is now suing over this event, but there’s no telling how the case will go with such limited media exposure. The DHS is literally gutting the Constitution and declaring itself higher than the law of the land by doing this, and it spells out major trouble for the entire Bill of Rights at large.
In 2008 Homeland Security promised to demonstrate within 120 days that what it was engaged in was constitutional. In August 2009, a year later, a report was released by, not surprisingly, the Department of Homeland Security, in which they had basically investigated themselves (that always results in the right thing) and determined that it was acting constitutionally.
Their explanation was that they weren’t actually removing the Constitution from US soil, only the border, which has now apparently moved thousands of mile well past our borders. Well they must have developed the TSA and the VIPR teams to take care of those other areas.
Tim Brown is the Editor of Freedom Outpost and a regular contributor to The D.C. Clothesline.
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