ARE WE LIVING IN A POLICE STATE? YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE!

By Juan Montoya

Remember the good old days when you could take off to Boca Chica Beach on a whim?

In our high school and junior college days one could load up on 55-cent a gallon gas, load up a cooler with ice from the lobby of any local hotel (or motel), and pile in with friends to watch the moon come up.

Or, conversely, you could ride your bike upriver through the levee system and alight on Nell Palmer Drive in Las Prietas for a nice ride. If you were a fisherman, you could either rise your bike or drive right up to the docks or the grain elevators and fish for the annual run of drum.

Alas, in post 911, those days are gone. Even if you just want to shoot a few rounds of golf at the college course, the ominous presence of the various law enforcement and border police are thick as flies.

A commenter asked us if we were aware that a new IDEA charter schools is building a new campus down by the ITECC campus, off Mexico Blvd., by the old Amigoland Mall. 

He said that since about a year or two ago,  he had noticed that there had been some development going on down there with the paving of some streets past Mexico Blvd. toward the fence and last night learned that it is supposed to be the site of a new IDEA school.

He also said that when he went down there a few nights ago to give a tour to a visiting friend around sunset, they encountered "a terrorist in green idling on the road.

" As we passed the vehicle, the driver tried to make some kind of morse-code or strobe signal with their flashlight. We didn't know what that meant, so we kept driving, making our way out back towards downtown. They eventually started to follow us, but never turned on their sirens or anything. We stopped anyway. I'll spare the details for now, but when I asked whether or not we were free to go or if we were being detained, the authorized terrorist officer told us that his 'probable cause' was that we were in an area where people pick up migrants and/or drugs and that I was being confrontational (for asking questions). Eventually, he tired of my asking him questions and refused to talk to me. (So I never identified myself other than as someone who refused to be un-critical.) My friend, however, who did also participate in the critique of the 'stop,' did eventually consent to the request and showed their ID. And after that we were 'allowed' to continue on our way (as if we ever needed his permission)." 

Our commenter asks: "Just thinking that it's interesting to see the confluence of agencies (BP and IDEA) who are participating in the infringement of people's rights: e.g. free, good public education for all and right to resist any unreasonable searches/seizures and to refuse self-incrimination. What effect is the onslaught of law enforcement and border security personnel having on the civil rights of legal citizens living here?"

A few years ago, if you lived among the border at the time, it was not unusual to go into downtown Brownsville and be subjected to ID searches as you ate in a restaurant, were walking down the sidewalk, or merely window-shopping.

The discretion of stopping anyone was left to the individual agents on the ground. If you were pulled out of a grocery store line, a gas station, a movie house, or a school campus, there was nothing you could do but prove your citizenship. There were even Border Patrol cops going into 14th Street bars and bathrooms and along barrio alleys asking people for ID.
Today we have drones flying over us, plans for the federal government to spend an additional $600 million for yet more border security, and of course, the multimillion dollar border wall.
President Barack Obama's 2011-2012 budget request included $297 million for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents, $39 million for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and Explosives, $52.6 million for 160 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, $6 million for 20 new Customs and Border Protection canine teams.

Of course, then Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia – before he was put out to pasture as police chief at  the port of Brownsville – had his doubts about those efforts at closing the borders.

"You can put additional personnel along the border, you can build fences, but not everything is caught there," he said. "Things are still happening on this side of the fence."

Currently, if you go to Boca Chica Beach, you will be asked for identification on the BP checkpoint on the way back. The same applies if you're downtown are on the city's streets. 

Unlike other parts of the country, people in Brownsville must answer to local, county, state, federal, ICE, BP, FBI, DEA, any number of metro squads, special teams, and even the military when asked for identification in the course of living here.
It is virtually impossible to reach the river on this side of the border now. The days of going to the main port in Brownsville to fish is a thing of the past. You have to deal with the formidable force under Garcia, and before him, the indefatigable George Gavito.

And we haven't asked, but I think we would all be surprised if we knew the extent of governmental surveillance happening along the border and in border communities.

Do we feel any safer now?