Posted on 03/01/2018 11:13:15 AM PST by nickcarraway
Local
By Jason Buch and Joana SantillanaFebruary 12, 2018 Updated: February 12, 2018 7:57pm
7
A long-running feud between a South Texas rancher and the Border Patrol has escalated into a civil lawsuit after the rancher confiscated a surveillance camera he found on his property.
The suit filed by Ricardo D. Palacios, a lawyer who lives on a ranch near Encinal, north of Laredo, against federal agents and a Texas Ranger raises questions about how much leeway law enforcement officials have to enter private property near the border.
Get the latest news, sports and food features sent directly to your inbox.
Congress has given the Homeland Security Department permission to patrol private property within 25 miles of the border without a warrant, but experts say the courts have never defined how much authority agents have on private land. Federal agents cannot enter “dwellings” without a court order.
If a judge finds that his property is outside the 25-mile zone, as Palacios has asked, the lawsuit might not resolve those questions.
Palacios’ dispute with the Border Patrol dates to at least 2010, when, the suit filed in November alleges, one of his sons was “body-slammed” by agents at an immigration checkpoint several miles south of Encinal. The son was detained for about 90 minutes, then released, according to the suit.
Several hours later, about 3 a.m., a standoff developed between Palacios and his sons, who also live on the property, and a group of agents gathered at the ranch gates. A Border Patrol supervisor eventually defused the situation, but Palacios alleges that he frequently finds agents on his property.
After one such incident, Palacios confiscated “a 1/2-inch diameter, white fiberglass spike about 2½ feet long with a round, 3-inch red reflector affixed at the top” that he found embedded in the ground, according to the suit.
Border Patrol agents apparently didn’t protest when Palacios took the spike — the suit says he still has it — but when he found a surveillance camera attached to a mesquite tree near his house and took it down, agents with Customs and Border Protection and the Texas Rangers started calling him. The suit says a Ranger eventually threatened to arrest Palacios if he didn’t return the camera.
The suit says Palacios believes that CBP agents and Rangers cooperated to place the camera on his property, “in violation of (his) property and constitutional rights.”
Palacios has asked a federal judge in Laredo to declare his property outside the 25-mile zone in which the Border Patrol can go on his land. He’s also asking for $500,000 in damages for mental and emotional distress and for unspecified punitive damages.
Officials with the Border Patrol and the Texas Department of Public Safety said they couldn’t comment on the pending litigation. The Texas attorney general’s office, which is representing Texas Ranger Mario Martinez, filed a motion to dismiss the suit, saying Martinez was acting in his capacity as a law enforcement officer and has qualified immunity.
Palacios referred questions to his attorney, Raul Casso, who said neither the state nor the federal government had authority to be on Palacios’ property and shouldn’t have been installing surveillance devices without a judge’s order.
America’s Borders and the Path to Security by Express-News on Scribd
“The government is peeking around where it’s not supposed to without any judicial oversight,” he said.
Casso rejected the state’s position that Martinez was acting within his rights as a law enforcement officer.
“It’s not us against the good guys,” Casso said. “We’re on the side of the law. We’re enforcing the Constitution and the laws that emanate from it. The government and its agencies need to respect private property and the individuals whose property it is.”
The Border Patrol has interpreted the law as giving it latitude to operate on private property, said Efrén Olivares, the racial and economic justice director at the Texas Civil Rights Project. However, the courts haven’t defined “patrolling,” and it’s not clear if the law allows Border Patrol agents to place sensors or cameras on private land, Olivares said. Last year, the organization operating the National Butterfly Center in Hidalgo County after the center’s executive director found CBP contractors clearing brush on private property.
The camera Palacios found on his property appears to be part of Operation Drawbridge, a multimillion-dollar effort by DPS that began in 2012 to build a “virtual wall” along the border. The agency has purchased 4,359 cameras, similar to wildlife cameras popular with ranchers but capable of connecting to cellphone towers, for about $300 a piece and has installed them across South Texas, according to DPS.
The cameras can be monitored by the state’s Border Security Operations Center in Austin, the six Joint Operations Intelligence Centers DPS has along the border and CBP officials. According to a DPS presentation to Congress last year, the images captured by the cameras can also be viewed by local law enforcement officers and by ranchers who have access through a password-protected webpage.
Border Security Measures by Express-News on Scribd
State troopers might be able to enter private property within the 25 miles and install a Border Patrol camera if they’re working with Homeland Security, Olivares said. But the law doesn’t allow state or local law enforcement to go on private property without a warrant, even within the 25-mile zone granted to the Homeland Security Department, nor does it allow state or local law enforcement agencies to place cameras on private property.
“The statute grants that authority to DHS agents or employees, not any other state agency or county agency or city police department,” Olivares said. “It doesn’t mean that within 25 miles, any agency, state, local, can enter private land.”
The state may have found a way around that. Testifying before Congress last year, DPS Director Steve McCraw told lawmakers: “The state of Texas has provided Border Patrol agents more than 4,000 low-cost, high-capability cameras to detect smuggling activity along the border.”
“If they are giving it to the Border Patrol, they’re free to do it, and now it’s no longer the property of DPS,” Olivares said, meaning the Border Patrol could then put the cameras on private property within the 25-mile zone.
However, it would be difficult for the state to bring criminal charges against Palacios, as Martinez, the Ranger, allegedly threatened.
“If that’s what they are doing, it is then Border Patrol’s property,” Olivares said of the camera.
If a judge finds that Palacios’ property isn’t within 25 miles of the Rio Grande, the issue of whether the Border Patrol has access to his property is likely rendered moot. The zone tracks the loops and bends of the river, but Palacios’ lawyers say the closest the border comes to his ranch is more than 27 miles from his property line.
“We hear about this happening to people, but it’s sort of isolated incidents. … And it doesn’t necessarily rise to a lawsuit,” added Olivares, who’s based in the Rio Grande Valley. “But it’s still abuse of authority by CBP agents, so I’m glad there’s a lawsuit taking this on, because there’s a problem of Border Patrol and CBP agents doing more than the law allows them to do, and they trespass on private property.”
But Palacios’ suit points to bigger problems with increased surveillance across the border, said Chris Rickerd, policy counsel for border and immigration issues at the American Civil Liberties Union. Drones, surveillance blimps, license plate scanners and facial recognition technology are all potential invasions of privacy, he said. As evidence, he pointed to the 2016 arrest by Border Patrol of a woman and her young son at a baseball game in La Joya after DPS cameras recorded them going into the bushes to relieve themselves.
“The question really becomes what sort of surveillance is really looming over every border resident in their daily lives?” he asked.
Maybe it was th same thing with the Bundys? I guess these days you get attacked if you aren’t a socialist.
If I found a camera, or a drone for that matter, on my property, I would confiscate and disable first, answer questions and negotiate the return to its owner later.
Not enough info to determine my opinion. If it is to keep Wetbacks out, then I am for cameras.
Makes sense.
Of course, we don’t know if this gentlemen was completely surprised, or there was some indication that it was border surveillance (if indeed it was), and he just objected.
We also don’t know if every ranch within miles had cameras installed, or there was some special and unique reason for a camera to show up at the Palacios’, such as (unproven) a lot of illegals apparently flowing through his property.
It’s hard for me to get too excited absent more info.
Some of you on here are so clueless that it’s embarrassing. My last name is Castillo, my family has been in New Mexico since 1598. Many of these Texas ranchers with last names you don’t like are the same. Govt over reach is govt over reach. Doesn’t matter what your last name is.
I’m just going by the article. Should the feds be able to ‘watch your place’ with a camera mounted on a tree on your property against your wishes, without so much as a warrant?
That is true of your home and outbuildings and the area around them known as curtledge. But there is a legal concept known as 'Open Fields' and any officer with a legitimate law enforcement purpose can enter open fields without a warrant.
They are idiots. What about the Bundys?
Have any Texian heritage? God bless those Mexican citizens who moved to, developed, and then defended Texas with Stephen F. Austin.
There are a great many Americans whose family and property rights go well back to before Texas was a state, not saying that's the case here, and the origin of their surname makes them no less Americans or deserving of their rights.
Government has perfect right to enter private property if it is in the governmental interest, even more so in the case of national security. It has never been any different.
________________
Then why have warrants at all?
________________
Exactly
I had a visit from the Zoning Officer last year, my land is deep and I own the private roads that go to it as well. This POS drives right pass me, I get in my van and follow him, he is driving all over my property, with out permission. I had no idea who this creep was, I phoned it into the cops and eventually he stopped and tried to talk to me, he said he was the zoning officer, I told him to get off my property, he said he didn’t have to, I told him to get off my property (again), he tried to explain to me that he had authority to be on my property anytime he wanted, I stopped him, I said no you don’t this property is properly posted and I don’t want you here, leave now. He left. He sent me a letter that I was in violation of many township codes, pure BS, and if I did not comply in 2 weeks I would face stiff fines and possible imprisonment. I sent it to my attorney.
Long story short, this government dweeb ends up giving up coming after me. He has other problems now, apparently he was going after the Jewish people in my town and singling them out over violations as well and now they are suing the township. This zoning officer, his department and township boards are also now under federal DOJ investigation for civil rights violations. So hopefully that stuff keeps him busy for a while.
Great historical lesson. Thanks for posting.
Exactly. Mexico has been and remains a failed state since its inception. The Aztlan claim is a myth made up from whole cloth.
Every Town official where I live is required to make an appointment with a resident if they want to visit property. That’s the way it should be everywhere.
Congress lacks the authority to give Homeland Security the authority to violate a person's 4th (and possibly 5th) Amendment rights, based solely on where their property is located.
The government does not have rights, it has powers. And it only has the powers that have been given it by the People.
Please show me the enumerated power in the United States Constitution that empowers the government to "enter private property in the governmental interest" without a warrant for the purpose of installing surveillance devices.
No, they should not.
“My last name is Castillo, my family has been in New Mexico since 1598”
Heh. That blows the eurocentric Mayflower out of the water by 22 years.
Spain is in Europe, Rb.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.