What do you call a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol traffic stop when it takes place hours and miles away from the actual Canadian border?

You could call it unnecessary and disruptive as it results in severe traffic congestion on I-93 (Sept 2019, near Lebanon; June near Woodstock during the Laconia Motorcycle rally); or a waste of time and money (four checkpoints last summer in Vermont resulting in 2,400 stopped cars but only one arrest – for a Visa overstay.) Or you could call it harassment or a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. You can also call it racial profiling as they target people of color in their stops.

I was in the passenger seat of my friend’s vehicle on Aug. 21, 2018 as we were stopped by what looked like army officials armed with guns to their hips, except it wasn’t the army, it was Border Patrol. An agency that has become extremely militarized allowing themselves to wander from actual U.S. borders and have boarded our trains, buses, and even at times entered businesses and stores in plain clothes to capture unsuspecting victims.

They asked us if we were citizens. We refused to answer such a problematic question. Why did it matter if people are citizens or not? One does not need to be a citizen to be safe from causing harm in this country. The assumption that non-citizens are dangerous is a very problematic binary. There is a long history of how U.S. immigration policies have been used and continue to be used to keep people of color out while trying hard to maintain white hegemony.

After refusing to answer we were detained. They told us to pull our car to the side and shoved a camera in our faces recording us as we recorded them. One of the agents told me we were not going to leave until we answered his question. This is in violation of our rights, as according to law the Border Patrol can only detain you for a reasonable amount of time without cause.

Then we further engaged in heated conversation where I asked him how it could be ok to stop traffic to try to seek out people who have done nothing wrong. After going back and forth he said “I don’t detect any foreign accent, so I’m assuming that you’re a U.S. citizen, but I don’t know yet.”

I asked him “So now the presumption is accents?” 

“That’s a good indicator,” the agent replied.

I was so saddened to see that racial profiling (which is prohibited) was being used.

After consulting with their intelligence, they were able to tell who I was and where I was born and let us go on our way.

All of this happened after a New Hampshire court ruling in April 2018 found a New Hampshire Border Patrol checkpoint “unconstitutional under both state and federal law … This New Hampshire court decision … ‘serves as a crucial reminder that the agency can’t always use the pretext of illegal immigration to curtail civil liberties.’ Here, CBP abused its federal authority, in collaboration with local police, to circumvent the constitutional rights of those traveling in New Hampshire,” according to Gilles Bissonnette, Legal Director, ACLU of New Hampshire.

I am now organizing against these racist checkpoints. The last time there was a checkpoint we responded by not only going through checkpoints and refusing to answer, but also holding a sign two exits before checkpoint on an overhead bridge warning immigrants to take exit before the checkpoint.

We had several actions demanding both VT and NH government officials speak out and do something about the checkpoints including hand-delivering a petition to Gov. Sununu with 3,600 signatures demanding he put an end to these checkpoints, and meetings on both the Vermont and New Hampshire congressional delegation to speak out. Most recently there was a letter crafted by New Hampshire and Vermont Congressional delegation asking Border Patrol about these checkpoints and the rationale behind them. We look forward to reading the answers to their questions.

Asma Elhuni is the Lead Organizer for Upper Valley Interfaith Project in New Hampshire and Vermont.