Police brutality and misconduct

Report: US Border Patrol Units Allegedly Tracking Finances

Is this a surveillance dragnet shredding privacy rights or just competent law enforcement?

Published 4 days ago

Report: US Border Patrol Units Allegedly Tracking Finances

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Above: A U.S. homeland security officer at an airport in Atlanta, Ga., on March 22. Image credit: Megan Varner/Getty Images

The Spin

Establishment-critical narrative

Border Patrol has quietly built a dragnet of license plate readers, drones, towers and financial data to flag ordinary Americans as suspicious, then uses this ill-gotten information to tip off local cops to invent a traffic violation as cover. Drivers get interrogated, searched and sometimes stripped of cash without ever being suspected of a real crime. This is a secret surveillance state laundered through pretextual stops, shredding Fourth Amendment rights.

404 Media Reason.com

Pro-establishment narrative

Financial reporting and highway stops are the backbone of catching money launderers, traffickers and tax cheats, with more than 80% of IRS criminal investigations involving a Bank Secrecy Act filing on the subject. Courts have repeatedly held that an officer's motive doesn't matter when there's an objective legal basis for the stop. Sharing intelligence between agencies is a basic law enforcement tactic.

Law Commentary Ballard Spahr LLP