Day 6 in El Paso: Dialogue with Customs and Border Patrol

The last substantive day of Hofstra’s Program on the Enforcement of Immigration Law at the Border involved a presentation to and conversation with Customs and Border Patrol. As you can see from the picture above, much of the dialogue focused on the 4th Amendment’s application to the border. 

Lauris Wren (Hofstra) and I discussed cases decided by the 5th and 10th Circuits to CBP in the last five years. During our presentation, we divided the participants into different groups to discuss several hypotheticals. Participants of the program included lawyers for CBP, CBP supervisors and Office of Field Operations supervisors, and, of course, the students.  Each group was asked to discuss on whether a stop of a vehicle conducted by Border Patrol agents complied with the 4th Amendment. Then, using clickers, each person was asked to answer the question, “Did the [Border Patrol] stop violate the 4th Amendment.”

Here’s one of the hypotheticals we used during the presentation. (Readers of this blog should be able to identify the case on which the facts are based).

Here’s how the participants responded to the question.

Of course, I hoped for 100 percent. 

RCV