Why Are Americans Searched At The Border? By Jacob G. Hornberger!!
(2017-03-17 at 13:13:22 )

Why Are Americans Searched at the Border? by Jacob G. Hornberger

Whenever American citizens travel to another country, they are subjected to intrusive searches at the hands of United States officials upon returning to the United States.

Why? What is the justification?

Since Americans living today have all been born and raised under this type of system, hardly anyone questions it. It is just accepted, passively and submissively, as part of living in a "free" society.

Yet, when the government wields the authority to conduct a complete search of people without any suspicion of a crime having been committed, that is far from any free society.

When the Constitution was proposed, American citizens were extremely leery. They had been told that the Constitutional Convention was being held simply to propose changes to the Articles of Confederation, which provided for a federal government with extremely weak powers. In fact, I will bet that most Americans today do not even realize that the federal government during the 13 years under the Articles of Confederation did not even have the power to tax.

So, imagine the surprise among the American people when the Constitutional Convention proposed a brand new federal governmental system rather than simply proposing modifications to the Articles of Confederation.

Why were our American ancestors leery? Because they knew that throughout history, governments had proven to be the greatest threat to the freedom and well-being of their citizenry. That is why the federal government under the Articles had such weak powers.

So, not surprisingly, most Americans were not wildly enthusiastic about replacing the federal government under the Articles with the federal government called for in the Constitution.

The promoters of the Constitution argued that this time things would be different because the powers of the federal government would be expressly enumerated in the document. If a power was not enumerated, it could not be exercised. If the Congress or the president attempted to exercise a power that was not enumerated, an independent judiciary would declare their actions unconstitutional, null, and void.

Accepting the deal, Americans were still not convinced. As a condition for approving the Constitution, they demanded the enactment of a Bill of Rights that would protect their rights and freedoms from the federal government, which, again, they considered to be the big threat to their rights and freedoms.

That is how we got the First Amendment. Our ancestors knew that federal officials would inevitably try to take away their fundamental rights of free speech, religious liberty, intellectual liberty, and political liberty. The First Amendment expressly prohibited them from doing so.

That is how we also got the Second Amendment. Our ancestors understood that federal officials would be the biggest threat to their fundamental right to own guns. The Second Amendment prohibited them from confiscating their guns.

Our ancestors also knew that federal officials would inevitably do other bad things to them, such as murder them, incarcerate them without trial, torture them, force them to confess to crimes, and subject them to intrusive searches of their persons, belongings, homes, and businesses.

That is why our ancestors demanded the enactment of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments.

The Fourth Amendment was designed as a way to prevent federal officials from arbitrarily searching whoever they wanted. It requires a search warrant issued by an independent magistrate, one who must determine, based on evidence presented to him, that there is "probable cause" that a person has committed a crime.

No probable cause? Then no search warrant. No search warrant? No search, no matter how convinced some federal official might be that a particular person has incriminating evidence on him or in his premises.

So, we return to our original question: Why are Americans subjected to searches upon returning from travel from some foreign country?

Someone is likely to respond: Because we have immigration controls, Jacob.

But immigration controls relate to a persons citizenship. If a nation has immigration controls, then it stands to reason that officials are going to ask for a persons papers, in order to establish that he, or she, is, in fact, a citizen and, therefore, free to return to his country.

What does a search of a persons body and belongings have to do with establishing citizenship?

Someone might respond: But, Jacob, we have a drug war going on. A person returning from another country might be carrying drugs.

That is true but, then again, he might not be carrying drugs. Indeed, federal officials are not permitted to search people for drugs who travel from San Francisco to New York? Why should they be permitted to search Americans who travel from Paris to New York?

Freedom of travel has always been considered a fundamental, natural, God-given right, one that even United States officials acknowledge the existence of. That is, in fact, why they have never made it a crime for Americans to travel to Cuba. They did not want to leave the impression that they were destroying this fundamental right. So, to inhibit American travel to Cuba, they simply made it a felony offense for Americans to spend money in Cuba (as if that did not infringe on another fundamental right-that of economic liberty).

Given that freedom of travel is a fundamental, natural, God-given right, then why are United States officials permitted to assault it with intrusive searches just because an American travels outside the country? If they believe that an American is committing a crime when returning to the United States, then they can go get a warrant. But where is the justification for doing what our ancestors were clearly attempting to prohibit federal officials were doing with the enactment of the Fourth Amendment?

In an era in which federal officials are now requiring Americans who are returning from foreign travel to turn over their cell phones for searches and forcing them to disclose their passwords, it is time for Americans to start asking some fundamental questions regarding the nature of liberty, the purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the proper role of government in a free society and to abandon the passivity, submissiveness, and deference to authority that have come to characterize their lives.

A good place to start would be by pondering the following question: Under what legal and moral authority do government officials subject American citizens to searches simply because they have exercised their fundamental, natural, God-given right to travel to other countries?

Printed here with permission from Mr. Jacob G. Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation!! Their Great Website!!