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Some Border Residents Getting Fed Up With Checkpoints

Some Border Residents Getting Fed Up With Checkpoints
Roque Planas
By 

National Reporter, HuffPost

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents and K-9 security dog keep watch at a checkpoint station, on Feb. 22, 2013, in Falfurrias, Texas. Some drug smugglers caught at the highway checkpoint about an hour north of the Texas-Mexico border are losing their drugs, but not facing prosecution because cooperation between local and federal prosecutors has broken down. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents and K-9 security dog keep watch at a checkpoint station, on Feb. 22, 2013, in Falfurrias, Texas. Some drug smugglers caught at the highway checkpoint about an hour north of the Texas-Mexico border are losing their drugs, but not facing prosecution because cooperation between local and federal prosecutors has broken down. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

You drive up to the Border Patrol checkpoint, the agent asks your citizenship — or asks nothing at all — and you go on.

That’s the way drivers usually experience the Border Patrol’s many Southern Arizona checkpoints.

But your checkpoint experiences can change dramatically once you’ve had agents subject you to a deeper questioning, once they send you into “secondary” for a search with the dogs, and once you watch powerlessly, detained as your neighbors drive by. After that, anticipation of the checkpoint may begin before you leave your home, the approach to the checkpoint may raise your anxiety and the questions may spark your anger.

Read more on Arizona Daily Star

Before You Go

The U.S.-Mexico border is violent

6 Misconceptions About The Border

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