Originally Posted by Xdashdriver

While the Supreme Court does allow law enforcement officers to stop and detain someone on the basis of reasonable suspicion, the only search that is allowed to occur absent probable cause is a "pat-down" for weapons for the officer's safety. Any search beyond a weapons pat-down would require probable cause. TSA and CBP searches are different under an exemption the court carved out as an "administrative search".

You cannot "declare" reasonable suspicion. There have to be a set of facts which would lead a reasonable person to believe the person detained may have either just committed or was about to commit a crime. The basis for an officer's reasonable suspicion can be challenged in court and if found to be unreasonable any evidence gained from the stop would be thrown out.

In the case I referenced earlier, the Supreme Court ruled that an internal immigration checkpoint (not on the border) was not an unreasonable search on the basis that:

1. people do not have as great an expectation of privacy in a vehicle as they do in their residence.

2. the scope of the search and seizure was limited and did not cause an unreasonable invasion of the person's privacy when weighed against the national interest of enforcing immigration law.

3. The checkpoints worked because the court had evidence that CBP was able to make a lot of arrests using the checkpoint.

Now, the case above also talked about how there was less of a chance for their to be harassment/discrimination on the part of the law enforcement officers because the checkpoint was stationary, always operated in the same place and everyone was subject to the checkpoint. The facts of the news article are slightly different. The court may decide differently when faced with a different set of facts, however the first two points I mentioned above could easily translate over to the news story case.

As far as jurisdiction goes, the CBP officers were well within their jurisdiction. They were investigating an immigration issue. If they had come across the violation of any other federal law while investigating the immigration issue, they have full authority to make an arrest. They may very well refer any non-immigration violations to the FBI or other federal agency but that doesn't stop them from making an arrest. CBP arrests for drug violations all the time at their internal checkpoints. In fact, based on statistics I saw earlier today, they make more drug arrests than immigration arrests.

Let's be clear, I'm not saying that what they did was definitely legal....it's just not as cut and dried "illegal" as some on here would make out.