Comment by AngryData
3 days ago
> limited to warrantless inspection of immigration documentation
That's a pretty massive limit considering there is no form of federal citizenship ID people carry around and there is no straight forward way to prove you are a US citizen on the spot. It is essentially "Papers please!" except most people don't have papers. Even my state driver's license doesn't say "US citizen" on it, nor is it proof of citizenship since non-citizens also get state drivers licenses. So what if they claim they think im an illegal? Then detain me for not having my immigration papers? Throw me in a jail cell and the only thing that happens when im let out is "Oops, see ya next time!". What if they know im a full US citizen but decide to claim they think im hiding illegals in my vehicle? They are under no obligations to pay for damages done during a legal search and merely claiming to suspect illegals in my vehicle could result in them searching it and ripping my seats out.
At no point will be I be compensated for the disregard of my rights because it is legal. If I take monetary losses because of these stops, there is also no recourse except maybe in the most extreme examples they might pay end up paying for a repair, but only after I gamble significant amounts of money on a lawyer, that not everyone has to start with, nor does everyone win.
CBP claimed there was drugs up my ass, dragged me to a hospital in cuffs (twice) then stuck me with the ER bill when nothing was found. Oh and got a warrant AFTER to retroactively cover their ass, based on fictitious PC.
Most of the stuff you're het up about here is stuff sub-par-to-bad cops do to regular folks. That's not immigration stuff, that's authoritarian cop stuff and it's shit that has happened throughout human history.
> They are under no obligations to pay for damages done during a legal search...
Nah, I don't believe this. I totally believe that they're not obligated to compensate you for time spent waiting for them to get done jacking themselves off over your car, nor are they obligated to help you perform basic reinstallation work [0] to get yourself back on the road, but I don't believe your claim as written. Link me to some court cases that support it.
[0] For example, reinstalling removable seats would be basic reinstallation. Reassembling and reinstalling a disassembled primary fuel tank would not.
Do you really think cops are going to take the time and the tools to properly disassemble a vehicle for inspection and not rip apart panels, cut into seats, and break shit? Their search is legal and so they have qualified immunity from damages if there is even the slightest hint of possibility that they might have found evidence for a crime they suspected in the process. Harlow v.Fitzgerald established qualified immunity as it stands today and it is all but blanket immunity as long as there is any legal backing for their actions, which we have already established they have.
A 5 second google search will bring you up endless legal explanations from lawyer firms that if it is a legal search you have almost no chance of getting your money back unless you can someone get an officer to admit to damaging your property without cause, and good luck with that when they know they can just claim they were performing a legal search. And a few more minutes you will find endless cases of damage awards being denied, even in many cases where the search was found to not be legal to start with and all criminal charges dropped.