Leahy: No Internal Border Patrol Checkpoints

(Valley News) U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has asked the Department of Homeland Security to clarify whether the agency plans to build permanent border checkpoints in Vermont. Leahy’s request comes after the release of documents that show the agency has conducted detailed studies of prospective locations for such facilities far from the Canadian Border.

In a letter to Rand Beers, the acting director of DHS, Leahy cited a trove of papers obtained by the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union that show in 2006 the Border Patrol evaluated several locations in the Twin States, including sites in the Upper Valley.

The same documents showed that when the Border Patrol operated a temporary checkpoint on Interstate 91 in Hartford during that period, most of the contraband agents confiscated was small amounts of marijuana.

“I have never been convinced that the effectiveness of the temporary Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 91 outweighs its intrusion into the lives of law abiding Vermonters,” Leahy wrote, saying he was seeking “reassurance” that no plans to build a permanent checkpoint are being pursued. “For example, as the documents obtained by the Vermont ACLU make clear, the majority of contraband seizures that occurred between 2004 and 2010 involved small amounts of marijuana or marijuana paraphernalia. It is difficult to agree that these seizures justify the intrusiveness that all Vermonters and visitors to the state experience when encountering this federal checkpoint.”

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