On June 6, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued their latest report on operations at internal checkpoints operated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), previously requested by Senators Pat Leahy (D‑VT), Patty Murray (D‑WA), Gary Peters (D‑MI) and Representative Bennie Thompson (D‑MS). Among the key findings:
- About 75 percent (12,194) of U.S. citizen drug seizure events involved marijuana only. About half of checkpoint events in which Border Patrol seized drugs from U.S. citizens (8,098 of 16,315) included the seizure of a personal use quantity of marijuana and no other drugs. Of particular note, CBP officials told GAO investigators that U.S. Attorney’s offices in their sector generally do not prosecute people for possessing personal use quantities of marijuana. (p. 27)
So CBP agents are making stops and seizures of minuscule amounts of marijuana in order to tout the “achievement” to their superiors and the public. And 91 percent of the time, those drug “busts” involved U.S. citizens. (p. 25)
Other GAO findings:
Officials also said that some sectors may prioritize seizing vehicles as a punitive consequence for drug possession or smuggling, for example, while other sectors may not. (p. 29)
Implication: get stopped with a dime-bag of “weed” and CBP agents might seize your car to make “an example” of you, especially if you live in or near El Centro, Laredo, or the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.
And CBP’s data collection on checkpoint encounters? A bureaucratic train wreck, according to GAO:
In our prior work, we found issues with the reliability of Border Patrol’s data on checkpoint activity, and in this review we found the agency continues to have them. 53 Specifically, we found that Border Patrol agents at checkpoints inconsistently documented certain checkpoint activity data, including data on apprehensions of smuggled people, canine assists with drug seizures, seizures of trace amounts of marijuana, non-drug property seizures, and attempted checkpoint circumventions. Further, agents did not consistently document the people involved in enforcement actions at checkpoints. Additionally, Border Patrol developed a tool to collect information about the outcomes of secondary inspections at checkpoints, but only about half of its checkpoints used the tool because it was not required, resulting in unreliable data on the outcomes of secondary inspections. (pp. 29–30)
In other words, if you’re pulled over for a secondary inspection and CBP agents rough you up, it may or may not get documented.
There are lots of other gems in this 95-page GAO report, but the overall takeaway is clear. CBP internal checkpoints remain constitutional rights violations stations, where taxpayer money and CBP personnel are squandered in a performative version of the “Drug War”–complete with punitive private property seizures and pointless arrests of American citizens.
The checkpoints should be defunded and the CBP agents manning them sent to the border where they belong, and where they will not be harassing American motorists just trying to get to their desired destinations.
