Originally Posted by
bay982
Please elaborate on your understanding of law involving ID and leeway at airports.
Would this apply to perhaps stopping every car on a highway, as there might be an undocumented person in a car? How about stopping everyone walking down the street to check ID, as there were reports of undocumented people roaming the city.
I'm just curious about where folks here draw the line.
I'm not aware of specific case law regarding CBP officers checking everyone's ID on a domestic flight, however the Supreme Court has deemed some searches to be "reasonable" and therefore not a violation of the 4th amendment. JFK is within 100 miles of a US border and CBP has some pretty broad latitude within that zone to search people and vehicles. The CBP would probably use US v Martin-Fuentes (1976) as their legal justification for the search. That case involved an internal border patrol checkpoint. Much of the legal reasoning the SCOTUS applied in that case could be used in this case.