I thought that the INS had closed the immigration checkpoints along I-5 and I-15 because they weren’t proving to be very effective.
Loki–like all things legal, you need to look at the evolution of the law. The Supremes have basically whittled away at the Fourth Amendment by holding that you have the right not be searched (without a warrant issued on probable cause) in places or during activities where you have a REASONABLE EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY. On a city bus, you expect that the contents of your suitcase are private. Weighing marijuana in your house, you expect that you are private. Thus the cops must get a warrant to go into your house and look for contraband or arrest you (there are some exceptions which have to do with emergency situations, “hot pursuit”)–and they would have to get a warrant to make you open your suitcase in the middle of, say, downtown Cleveland.
But the searching of belongings and travellers crossing international borders LONG predates even the Constituion itself. The routine, warrantless searching of incoming vessels by agents of the government probably goes back to–oh, I don’t know, Roman times? Phoenician times? (“You know there’s a two-drachma per 100-amphora import tax on this Macedonian olive oil, pal–so how come it’s hidden under this false deck?”) So it’s essentially impossible to argue that you had reasonably expected privacy when crossing a border.
That said, I sympathize with your complaints about the profiling done by the INS. I had a British friend who played in a reggae band; a white guy with a blond crewcut on top and cornrowed, beaded braids starting just above the neckline. He’d sweep the braids to the back, turn up his coat collar and sail through U.S. customs. Then, as soon as they’d stamped his passport, he’d lower the coat collar, flip out his hippie-dread braids, and watch the customs guys gnash their teeth. Need I add that this stratagem was based on bitter experience? Joe didn’t DO drugs, but he’d learned that he needed to look like someone who didn’t to enter the U.S. easily.