Collins writes: "Corey El was on an Amtrak train from Penn Station to Niagara Falls last Thursday when he says a Border Patrol officer approached his seat."
Officer at an Amtrak station. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty)
Border Agents Make Amtrak Riders Prove They're Citizens
08 February 18
Far from the border, passengers aboard Amtrak trains are now being asked for their status�and Amtrak is not saying whether a rider can be ejected for failure to produce papers.
orey El was on an Amtrak train from Penn Station to Niagara Falls last Thursday when he says a Border Patrol officer approached his seat.
�He asked me, �Are you an American citizen?�� he said. �I scoffed at him and said, �Yeah.��
El quickly got out his phone and took a video of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers questioning another Amtrak customer, which has since gone viral, receiving over 6,800 retweets.
The train was stopped in Syracuse, about 160 miles away from El�s destination, for about 20 minutes, he said. El remembers the officers asking two other riders for their citizenship status, and none of them were white. One passenger, who he said was �possibly Middle Eastern,� produced a burgundy passport during questioning.
�I originally wanted to tell him off and to refuse to answer. I know it�s legal,� said El. �But I�m cognizant of the fact that I�m also black. As a person of color, there�s a foot on my neck. I know that I can�t.�
The viral encounter raises a pivotal civil rights question that Amtrak wouldn�t clarify in several interactions with The Daily Beast.
Are Amtrak customers now required to bring with them proof of American citizenship, or else face being ejected from a train hundreds of miles away from their destination?
�The reason this thing goes viral is because it is outrageous,� said Jordan Wells, a staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, a branch of the ACLU. �We should be outraged at this seeming attempt to turn everyday transportation into a police dragnet where you have to respond to, �Papers, please.��
The Daily Beast reached out to Amtrak, asking if passengers must prove their citizenship to remain on trains, how frequently these interrogations are taking place, and how often trains are delayed due to citizenship checks.
�Amtrak cooperates fully with federal authorities and federal law,� said company spokesperson Jason Abrams. �Amtrak customers 18 years of age and older must carry valid photo identification.�
Valid photo identification does not necessarily prove U.S. citizenship. Tourists and documented immigrants on visas are also legally allowed on Amtrak trains.
The Daily Beast once again asked if passengers who could not immediately prove citizenship, even if in they are in the country legally, could be ejected from trains for further questioning mid-journey.
Amtrak initially responded by saying, �I suggest you check with CBP for more info,� but another spokesperson later said Amtrak riders do not need proof of citizenship to ride on its trains.
�Amtrak does not require proof of citizenship to travel on our trains,� said Amtrak media relations representative Kimberly Woods. �Amtrak cannot speak on behalf of Customs and Border Patrol or other law enforcement agencies.�
When asked again to clarify if a rider could be ejected from a train for further questioning if he or she doesn�t produce citizenship papers, Amtrak did not respond to a request for comment.
When asked for comment, a CBP spokesperson pointed to the Immigration and Nationality Act, under which Border Patrol officers can �within a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States� board and search for aliens in any vessel within the territorial waters of the United States and any railcar, aircraft, conveyance, or vehicle� within 100 miles of a border without a warrant.
�U.S. Border Patrol agents routinely engage in enforcement operations at transportation hubs throughout New York and Pennsylvania,� the spokesperson said.
�Although most Border Patrol work is conducted in the immediate border area, agents have broad law enforcement authorities, including the authority to question individuals, make arrests, and take and consider evidence.�
Syracuse�s Amtrak station is within 100 miles of the Canadian border by air.
Wells said this interpretation of the law is �not carte blanche authorization to violate people�s civil rights.�
�Maybe it�s because we go through a port of entry like an airport, we submit to searches. But this 100-mile zone is much different than at a point of entry. It covers two-thirds of the population of the U.S,� said Wells. �It could not possibly be that that would be a zone where the Constitution is not enforced.�
Wells said Border Patrol officers asking for proof of citizenship can create �a Fourth Amendment problem, if people don�t feel they can terminate the encounter and walk away.�
�You have a right to deny any request to search your belongings. Even if you�re undocumented, you have the right to decline [showing citizenship papers]. You have the right to remain silent, and that silence should not be used to forcibly detain somebody,� said Wells.
Wells said situations like El�s could also pose �an equal protection problem under the Constitution� if the demands for proof of citizenship were selectively based on race or ethnicity.
CBP�s spokesperson said carrying documentation is not �required.�
�U.S. citizens are not required to carry any documentation that would prove their citizenship. With that being said, the best way to prove citizenship is with a passport, their birth certificate, or with an enhanced driver�s license from states that have them,� the CBP spokesperson said. �Aliens, on the other hand, are required by law to carry documentation proving their right to be or remain in the United States. False claims to U.S. citizenship are in violation of immigration law.�
CBP did not respond when asked if a rider could be ejected from a train for further questioning if he or she didn�t produce papers.
While Wells said train and bus searches are �not a Trump-era phenomenon exclusively,� the searches do appear to be happening more frequently since Donald Trump became president.
�The aggressive enforcement without regard to constitutional limits is playing out not just in Customs and Border Protection but the Department of Homeland Security in general,� Wells said.
El said the 20-minute immigration document stoppage on his Amtrak train �set us back schedule-wise.� But he was much more concerned about the potential civil rights implications of the interaction.
�Who carries around a birth certificate?� he asked. �This is some slavery shit, like �Show me your freedom papers.��
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Republicans in Congress chose to obstruct anything he tried to do, including when Obama promoted Republican policies (most clearly with ObamaCare). In so doing, they opened the floodgates for overt racism to once again show its face, and proudly so.
When the corporate media showed us racist emails and tweets sent by politicians, business leaders and entertainers, they informed us that good old racial stereotyping was acceptable in high places. Many were happy to pick up that torch (in some cases, quite literally).
It should be noted that racism is growing more popular and fashionable in Europe, also. Far right-wing, exclusionary parties are gaining political power across Europe, fanned by the rush of refugees fleeing our Global War OF Terror and neoliberal impoverishment.
Even Latin America is seeing the return of the most European looking and leaning of their political leaders, after decades of growing political power by those with more clearly indigenous heritage.
Divide and rule. When will we finally learn that this strategy - as old as civilization itself - serves only the elite?
But, if she did move back into the White House, since her policies are so far right, I expect the faux obstructionism would become even more of a kabuki theater than it has been under Obama.
Bear in mind that Obama HAS "succeeded" in continuing all the Bush/Clinton/Bu sh neoliberal/neoc on policies. Few of those issues even rise to the level of debate in Congress. It's mostly the "identity politics" malarky that gets actually obstructed.
Yes, what he is doing now is useful in a limited way (though we are unlikely to get rid of racism and classism until we get rid of its economic cause, which is capitalism).
But it is beyond me how you can call a theocratic misogynist and perpetrator of capitalism's war on the poor a "good man" -- especially since he has repeatedly stressed his lack of contrition for signing Hyde and slashing AFDC.
See for example: https://stream.org/jimmy-carters-forgotten-courage-taxpayer-funded-abortions/ (This source is a Christofascist publication, which makes its revelations of Carter's continued efforts against women's sexual freedom extremely relevant.)
For a well-reasoned explanation of why Carter's opposition to sexual freedom is itself racist, see http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/37111-what-the-war-on-reproductive-rights-has-to-do-with-poverty-and-race
His amnesty for Vietnam War "draft dodgers" won over some progressive/lib eral folks. And his work with the poor and in support of fair elections and the Palestinians has made him the best former-Presiden t of my lifetime.
But you're right that we shouldn't let nostalgia cloud our view of the facts.
I read the article you linked to by Renee Bracey Sherman. Let me make this clear: I believe that women should generally have the right to end unwanted pregnancies. And I also realize that this is often even more urgent for low-income women and, therefore, women of color. But I don't agree with Sherman's analysis of the pro-life campaign to reduce abortion among women of color as "racist." If people are opposed to abortion, why wouldn't they try to discourage it among women of color? That's not to say their campaign is right, but why "racist"?
Much of what Sherman says about the history of oppression of black women is undoubtedly true. But can we really conclude that pro-life campaigners today are racist? Let's not overuse that word. Words that are overused lose their power.
And clearly, Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) was a racist eugenicist. She wrote and spoke about that quite openly.
This essay examines Ms. Sanger quite critically:
http://www.blackgenocide.org/sanger.html
And here's an interesting collection of her racist and/or eugenicist quotes:
http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=1953
Please don't get me wrong. I support what Planned Parenthood has become, and firmly believe terminating a pregnancy should always and only be every woman's choice. But there are reasons why this particular anti-abortion argument strikes a cord with many people.
"Generally?" What -- except when some Christian theocrat says they can't? Or maybe -- as Carter believes -- except when they're too poor to pay for what any Ruling Class woman can easily obtain even if abortion is illegal?
That said, I have no difficulty at all concluding anti-abortion campaigners are racist simply because they are mostly white Christian fanatics -- people who were violently racist long before abortion became an issue.
Such is the legacy of not only my years in the Bible Belt South, but also my years in New York City, where the typical devout Irish or Italian or Eastern European Christian is as malevolently racist as any Ku Klux Klansman.
This entire nation is awash in the venom of racism. To imagine its denial of sexual freedom to low-income people of color is not due to to racist malice -- specifically the malevolent white terror of certain minorities' alleged sexual prowess -- is to blind yourself to one of the more viciously perverse elements of the white segregationist mentality.
As for "generally," I favor a compromise where women could have an abortion with no restrictions in the first trimester but not later unless it was necessary to save the life of the mother or in the case of incest, rape or serious deformity.
I understand that is generally the practice in America, anyway. From what I understand, few clinics will give an abortion to a woman after three months of pregnancy unless her life is at stake.
If we accepted this kind of compromise, I think there's a chance we could actually get a law passed on the matter on the national level. It's unhealthy for our democracy that this is currently treated as a judicial matter. It keeps us worrying about who is going to be on the Supreme Court. It should be something we can make decisions about as citizens.
... It should be something we can make decisions about as citizens.
Abortion should be something that we can make decisions about as WOMEN.
On the gleeful sneer with which Carter, an avowed Christian theocrat, signed Hyde into law:
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,915176,00.html
On Carter's present-day, theocratically Christian uncontriteness for having signed Hyde into (permanent) law:
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/jimmy.carter.rejects.abortion.says.he.deeply.believes.in.many.christian.values/60111.htm?print=1
And here, in what should end this ignorance-based debate, is the denouement: Carter in 2005 denouncing the Democratic Party for its support of women's sexual freedom:
http://www.catholic-forum.com/forums/showthread.php?3933-Jimmy-Carter-Blasts-Democrats-for-Supporting-Abortion
Again I say: down-thumb me to your heart's content, you cannot change the ugly historical truth that Carter did more damage to women's sexual freedom than Reagan and the Bushes combined.
And now there's Hillary, conspiring with Sam Brownback and his ilk to do even more such damage by "tunneling beneath" the Constitution, for which see "The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power," especially pages 272-277.
Verily, the remnants of our liberty are infinitely more jeopardized by Christians than Muslims.
One other point. You said he "gleefully" signed the Hyde Amendment. So he was rubbing his hands with enthusiasm about it? I doubt it. You might get a better reaction if you didn't use such exaggerated language.
It does look questionable that he signed it. It sounds like Congress couldn't have overridden his veto, since less than 50% of the members voted for it (206 of 435).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Amendment
But was he really that enthusiastic? Keep in mind that that was a period when evangelicalism was really on the rise in America. He may have thought signing it was a peace gesture to evangelicals, and that private agencies like Planned Parenthood would be able to give poor women the help they needed.
Apropos the "glee" associated with Carter's signature on Hyde, I am also saying that -- because I have witnessed, both as a journalist and as a private citizen, the infinite viciousness of Christian fundamentalists -- "glee" is a proper description.
As Carter himself admitted, his private views are far more extreme than he dared express in public.
Thus a better description of the Christian response to Hyde would be "obscene glee" -- chiefly because of the fear and hatred of sexuality that is at the core not only of Christianity but of all Abrahamic religion.
Indeed it is a fear and hatred so profound, the efforts to overcome it have built an entire psychiatric industry.
Obviously I am not going to change your mind, but I do want to illustrate the company in which you place yourself by your defense of Carter's Jesus-brandishi ng misogyny. Hence this parting link:
https://stream.org/jimmy-carters-forgotten-courage-taxpayer-funded-abortions/
And then for balance, this:
http://nova.wpunj.edu/newpolitics/issue42/Fried42.htm
Lastly, remember Christians have murdered more people in the name of their god than have been slain by all other ideologies combined.
So you are saying that it's okay to say Carter was "gleeful" because you've seen some fundamentalists who were gleeful? You have not sent me anything that indicates he was, personally.
Why would "obscene glee" be a result of fear and hatred of sexuality?
Now, I want to make another point. I do believe women should have the right to terminate pregnancies, if for no other reason that we can't pass a lot that will make mothers love their children. Children should be invited into this world, as someone said once.
But the sexual revolution has not been an unmixed blessing. See for example this Time article:
http://time.com/4277510/porn-and-the-threat-to-virility/
The mix of sexual freedom and the capitalism you decry has some bad effects. There is also an accompanying piece on the effects of internet porn on women. Here's a quote:
"There is some indication that porn has a liberating effect: heterosexual male users are more likely than their peers to approve of same-sex marriage. On the other hand, they're less likely to support affirmative action for women. And porn users are also more likely than their peers to measure their masculinity, social status, and self-worth by their ability to score with 'hot' women."
The first article you sent above says Carter didn't benefit politically from signing the Hyde Amendment. The new Religious Right voted against him in 1980 anyway. But I can see how he might've regarded it as a good political compromise at the time.
Another point that I want to emphasize is that Roe vs. Wade was a major tool in the creation of Reagan's coalition that won in 1980. It allowed him to bring religious conservatives together with libertarian, business conservatives who didn't care about the unborn. Some of them thought, "Reagan wants to stop abortion, but I can vote for him anyway because we have Roe vs. Wade." If you think that's far fetched, let me tell you I know someone who thinks along those exact lines. For him, support for Republicans is about making government small and "kicking the bums off welfare," not any religious concern.
What the landlord is doing -- forcing us to pack for moving self and all possessions out for one or more days -- is an outrage. My understanding (from Tacoma officials to whom I fruitlessly complained) is it is illegal everywhere save Washington state, where collaboration between the Democrats and Republicans ensures that tenants remain perpetually powerless.
While the landlord's minimum-wage, mostly immigrant workers will do the actual moving, I -- a crippled 76-year-old -- must do all my packing, including 1,026 books. I also had to buy the packing supplies, $110.26 out-of-pocket. Never mind -- thanks to the state Democratic administration' s elimination of the telephone subsidy, its savage cuts in food stamps (88 percent) and Medicare Extra Help (82 percent), and the Obama Administration' s manipulations to avoid a 2016 Social Security COLA -- I now have NO discretionary income. In other words, literally forced to pay to maintain the landlord's profits, I am going without things I desperately need, shoes included.
Such is capitalism in action.
Hence the limitations in our dialogue: I have time to post only when I am resting, momentarily exhausted, from the excruciatingly painful work of packing.
(more)
That said, let us return to our disagreement over "gleeful." I was not only alive and conscious when Carter signed Hyde, I was also a member of the Working Press. (My career began 60 years ago next November.) Hence I will stand by my usage.
True, I was not present in Washington D.C., but some of my best federal sources were, and they described Carter's "life isn't fair" remark as "gleeful" and "smirking" and the most maliciously misogynistic comment ever uttered by a 20th Century Democratic president.
Indeed the outrage over his remark was more intense than the outrage over his signature. Why? Because the permanent (and ultimately fatal) damage Hyde did to the personhood of proletarian women would not be recognized for another three or four years.
But from whence -- and for what purpose -- comes your surprise non sequitur of "porn"?
As to the forcible conversion (or more aptly "perversion") of the U.S. into zero-tolerance Christian theocracy, that began in 1954, with the addition of "under God" -- i.e., the Abrahamic god -- to the Pledge of Allegiance.
It sounds like what you're going through is an injustice.
That's interesting that you live in Tacoma. I'm from Tacoma and still have family and friends there. I have been living in Birmingham, Alabama for 11 years.
President Carter was a man of his own time. He couldn't predict the future, as none of us can. I notice from the first article you linked to below (1981) that he worried about the deficit and thought military spending should be increased some. Those would not be surprising attitudes for politicians of that time. He thought Reagan's tax cuts would be inflationary. It's interesting that today, David Stockman, one of the people who criticized Carter in the article, realizes that the tax cuts were bad, that they caused the exploding national debt.
I think Carter has admitted that he has been a better ex-president than president.
I considered myself a socialist at one time, though never a Marxist. A major factor in my giving up belief in socialism was reading a book (around 1981) by Michael Harrington called Socialism. Though he considered himself a sort of Marxist, he gave good evidence in the book that the proletariat has never been a revolutionary class. His socialism was a "moral" socialism, or what I think Marx would have called "Utopian" socialism: socialism as the moral way to be, not the outgrowth of historical laws.
I brought up the porn article because your posts had emphasized the importance of sexual pleasure in life.
And I will write him in rather than commit the patently immoral act of voting for either of the candidates, Hillary or Trump, offered us by the One Party of Two Names.
Remember I am 76 years old: that means Hillary will kill me no matter what -- either by slashing Social Security and further slashing Medicare (the Democrats have already cut my Medicare Extra Help 82 percent and my food stamps 88 percent) -- or by starting World War III.
While it is true Trump promises to preserve Social Security and Medicare -- and many Sanders-support ing seniors say that absent Sanders, that's why they'll vote for Trump -- I know history, which includes the lesson implicit in how Trump's idols Hitler and Mussolini promised world peace.
I am with you, and refuse to vote for either monster.
The most important thing about Trump is that he is since 10 yrs. consistently against wars outside of the USA, which are the source of unimaginable suffering. That is the main difference to Obama and Dollary who have the mouth full of social issues and peace but are bombing uninhibited acc. to their whims.
Also, Trump is just following in the republican tradition since Nixon. It is the "southern strategy" as explained by Kevin Phillips. Trump may be a little more blunt about it and demogogic about it. But probably he is less virulent. Clinton as a "blue dog" democrat also practiced the republican "southern strategy." Hillary's "super predators" is of the same sort as Reagan's "welfare queens." Everyone knew that they meant African Americans by these terms, though they did not say it.
American politics is rife with racism and always has been. It just happens that Sanders is not a racist, Hillary has had no need to show her racism. So Trump stands out like a sore thumb.
It is all disgusting. Americans need to get over this. African Americans have contributed hugely to American life and culture. They are a valued part of America.
# Radscal 2016-05-28 14:59
I don't expect Hillary to become President. Either the Democratic Party will come to its senses and let Sanders win the nomination, or Drumpf will destroy her.
But such is the ignorance of a people who for nearly 70 years have been tragically denied access to Marxist analysis, first by the postwar purges, since then by censorship and propaganda as effective as anything orchestrated by Josef Goebbels in Nazi Germany.
Ergo, a primer: denying low-income women birth control and abortion -- as Carter did via Hyde and as his Christian colleagues will continue doing until all save the One Percenters are forced to choose between compulsory abstinence or forced breeding -- is oppressive simply because it abolishes their sexual freedom.
It is racist because at least half the low-income population of the USian Homeland are people of color.
The purpose served by denial of birth control under capitalism is the same as under slavery: a guaranteed supply of impoverished and therefore desperate, cheap and readily exploitable labor.
It also inflicts a level of sexual frustration that is sublimated into increased productivity. Capitalist psychology has known this for nearly a century, which is one of several reasons for the close and ironic alliance between the total moral imbecility of capitalism and the alleged "morality" of (innately misogynistic) Christianity.
Now do you get it?
That's why I cannot accept ANY Abrahamic theocrat as a "good man."
And no matter Carter's disguises, a theocrat he remains.
The farther white folk are from Black, the more they like them. I write as a 72 year old white man who has lived for the past 45 years in a neighborhood on Chicago's west side that is and has been 95+% African-America n since 1970.
He was also the first U.S. president to impose methodical cuts on welfare -- no doubt a manifestation of the "prosperity gospel" for which USian Christian fanatics are infamous.
Thus Carter, ostensibly a Democrat, was in fact the first president who made it obvious -- though only in retrospect -- the post-Kennedy USian Empire was deteriorating quickly into a despotism ruled by One Party of Two (deliberately deceptive) Names.
Here are a pair of relevant links, the first about Carter himself, the second about the murderous impact of the war on the poor Carter began -- the program of slow-motion genocide that remains a primary endeavor of the One Party of Two Names:
http://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/16/us/carter-urges-rise-military-outlay-cuts-other-areas-carter-message-excerpts-other.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/opinion/thomas-edsall-cutting-the-poor-out-of-welfare.html?_r=0
Being mainstream media links, these cannot be readily dismissed as "Communist propaganda."
Obviously this thread is filled with closed-minded Carter disciples who are either too young to remember his betrayals of women and the 99 Percent or have been seduced into forgetfulness by historical revisionists. So be it.