We're busy railing over
this thread on the vote over intelligence changes. And Rep. Ron Paul
denounces "internal screening points where identification will be demanded." "Domestic travel restrictions are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free nations," he says.
Those restrictions are already here across much of the Southwest, in the name of protecting our border with Mexico. And it's very much the "papers, please" kind of intrusive check that makes me seethe with anger every time I think about it.
Since I don't live that far south, my first encounter with this Border Patrol activity was last summer, headed northbound on I-25 about an hour north of El Paso. I was a man traveling solo in a distant vehicle, and I attracted their attention at the
mandatory checkpoint set up to block the freeway. They wanted to know where I was from,
where I was born, where I had been, where I was going, how long I had been traveling, and my purpose for traveling. All the while, I was staring at a giant billboard helpfully erected by the side of the road proclaiming so-many thousand pounds of illegal drugs had been seized so far that year at this checkpoint. Fortunately, I didn't get the full strip-search or full take-apart-the-car search, but I certainly was angry and pissed off for much of the rest of my trip -- that I had to
justify my domestic travels to a government official.
Then, when I toured southern Arizona back in October, I got even more up-close experience with these checkpoints. On road after road after road, the Border Patrol had set up "mobile" checkpoints (because, apparently, the permanent ones are still prohibited by Arizona law). I waited in a single-file line for 10 minutes to have another uniformed, armed Border Patrol official ask about my place of birth and citizenship. I drove past several mobile watchtowers -- three-story observation points that had been placed along the highway for the patrol to watch. All across an area roughly south of a line connecting I-8, Tucson, and I-10, the Border Patrol was out in force, demanding identification and information from all motorists, regardless of whether the vehicle had U.S. or Mexican plates.
Yes, I know we've got trouble along our border with Mexico. Bad trouble, in fact. But at what point do we stop being America in order to deal with our trouble? It's been said that all of southern Arizona is already essentially militarized.
This is not the country I grew up in, and it is not the country I love.