Border Patrol sued for harassing at Arivaca checkpoint

A federal lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Border Patrol agents of violating the First Amendment rights of people trying to monitor a contentious Border Patrol checkpoint near Arivaca.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson by two Arizona residents and the American Civil Liberties Union.

It seeks a court order to stop what it calls harassment, threats, retaliation and interference by agents against citizens trying to observe and take photos at a checkpoint on the road between Arivaca and Amado.

"They've cordoned us off far away from the checkpoint, parked their trucks to block our view and even threatened to arrest us," said Peter Ragan, one of the plaintiffs. "All of this is on top of the harassment and abuse community members were already experiencing at this checkpoint, which necessitated this campaign in the first place."

Ragan said agents also have engaged in petty harassment, such as parking Border Patrol vehicles with their engines running for hours, with the exhaust aimed at the monitors.

Victor Brabble, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman, said the CBP doesn't comment on pending litigation, but he provided a written statement that "Border Patrol traffic checkpoints are a critical enforcement tool for carrying out the mission of securing our nation's borders against transnational threats."

The statement also said that the CBP doesn't tolerate agent misconduct and that "we are dedicated to continued meetings with local representatives and community members of Arivaca, Green Valley and Tubac to address their concerns."

The Border Patrol has operated what it terms a "temporary" checkpoint on the road from Interstate 19 to Arivaca for seven years.

A group of area residents began to monitor the checkpoint last February, saying the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector leaders had ignored their repeated complaints about long traffic delays, harassment and abusive behavior by agents stopping vehicles.

Leesa Jacobson, one of the plaintiffs, in February said of the checkpoint: "This is over seven years now, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we have no idea if they've ever apprehended anyone. ... We think the monitoring is going to reveal that nothing much happens there (that would justify the inconvenience to local residents)."

In late summer, the Arivaca group said that after more than 200 hours of monitoring and 2,700 traffic stops, it had determined that the agents "systematically discriminate against Latino motorists."

Across both the northern and southern border states, the Border Patrol operates scores of similar checkpoints on roads and highways up to 100 miles from the border.

The CBP publicly acknowledges 35 "permanent" checkpoints, mostly on interstates and larger highways, but has declined to specify where or how many ostensibly temporary or "tactical" checkpoints the agency operates.

Agency documents reviewed by The Arizona Republic indicate the capacity to operate as many as 200 checkpoints.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Border Patrol's use of checkpoints away from the border to verify residency status in a 1976 ruling, U.S. vs. Martinez-Fuerte.

That case upheld the conviction of a man for transporting two undocumented immigrants.

In that ruling, the court said that questions at immigration checkpoints must be brief, minimally intrusive and immigration-focused, and that any "further detention … must be based on consent or probable cause."

But as the number of interior Border Patrol checkpoints has grown since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, so have complaints that agents routinely expand the scope of their questions and searches far beyond what that ruling envisioned, that interior checkpoints and patrols interfere with constitutionally protected rights and that the checkpoints effectively militarize huge swaths of U.S. territory.

Jacobson said Thursday that "as long as the checkpoint is here, I want to do everything I can to document abuses and protest the ongoing militarization of our communities and the border region."

The CBP's statement said, "Checkpoints deny major travel routes from the borders to smugglers intent on delivering people, drugs and other contraband to the interior of the United States and allow the Border Patrol to establish an important second layer of defense."