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The Fourth Amendment

Imagine youre driving a car, and a police officer spots you and pulls you over for speeding. He orders you out of the car. Maybe he wants to place you under arrest. Or maybe he wants to search your car for evidence of a crime. Can the officer do that?

The Fourth Amendment is the part of the Constitution that gives the answer. According to the Fourth Amendment, the people have a right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. This right limits the power of the police to seize and search people, their property, and their homes.

The Fourth Amendment has been debated frequently during the last several years, as police and intelligence agencies in the United States have engaged in a number of controversial activities. The federal government has conducted bulk collection of Americans telephone and Internet connections as part of the War on Terror. Many municipal police forces have engaged in aggressive use of stop and frisk. There have been a number of highly-publicized police-citizen encounters in which the police ended up shooting a civilian. There is also concern about the use of aerial surveillance, whether by piloted aircraft or drones.

The application of the Fourth Amendment to all these activities would have surprised those who drafted it, and not only because they could not imagine the modern technologies like the Internet and drones. They also were not familiar with organized police forces like we have today. Policing in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a responsibility of the citizenry, which participated in night watches. Other than that, there was only a loose collection of sheriffs and constables, who lacked the tools to maintain order as the police do today.

The primary concerns of the generation that ratified the Fourth Amendment were general warrants and writs of assistance. Famous incidents on both sides of the Atlantic gave rise to placing the Fourth Amendment in the Constitution. In Britain, the Crown employed general warrants to go after political enemies, leading to the famous decisions in Wilkes v. Wood (1763) and Entick v. Carrington (1765). General warrants allowed the Crowns messengers to search without any cause to believe someone had committed an offense. In those cases the judges decided that such warrants violated English common law. In the colonies the Crown used the writs of assistancelike general warrants, but often unbounded by time restraintsto search for goods on which taxes had not been paid. James Otis challenged the writs in a Boston court; though he lost, some such as John Adams attribute this legal battle as the spark that led to the Revolution. Both controversies led to the famous notion that a persons home is their castle, not easily invaded by the government.

Today the Fourth Amendment is understood as placing restraints on the government any time it detains (seizes) or searches a person or property. The Fourth Amendment also provides that no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. The idea is that to avoid the evils of general warrants, each search or seizure should be cleared in advance by a judge, and that to get a warrant the government must show probable causea certain level of suspicion of criminal activityto justify the search or seizure.

To the extent that a warrant is required in theory before police can search, there are so many exceptions that in practice warrants rarely are obtained. Police can search automobiles without warrants, they can detain people on the street without them, and they can always search or seize in an emergency without going to a judge.

The way that the Fourth Amendment most commonly is put into practice is in criminal proceedings. The Supreme Court decided in the mid-twentieth century that if the police seize evidence as part of an illegal search, the evidence cannot be admitted into court. This is called the exclusionary rule. It is controversial because in most cases evidence is being tossed out even though it shows the person is guilty and, as a result of the police conduct, they might avoid conviction. The criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered, declared Benjamin Cardozo (a famous judge and ultimately Supreme Court justice). But, responded another Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis, If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.

One of the difficult questions today is what constitutes a search? If the police standing in Times Square in New York watched a person planting a bomb in plain daylight, we would not think they needed a warrant or any cause. But what about installing closed circuit TV cameras on poles, or flying drones over backyards, or gathering evidence that you have given to a third party such as an Internet provider or a banker?

Another hard question is when a search is acceptable when the government has no suspicion that a person has done something wrong. Lest the answer seem to be never, think of airport security. Surely it is okay for the government to screen people getting on airplanes, yet the idea is as much to deter people from bringing weapons as it is to catch themthere is no cause, probable or otherwise, to think anyone has done anything wrong. This is the same sort of issue with bulk data collection, and possibly with gathering biometric information.

What should be clear by now is that advancing technology and the many threats that face society add up to a brew in which the Fourth Amendment will continue to play a central role.

In the Supreme Courts decisions interpreting the Fourth Amendment, there are a lot of cross-cutting arguments.

The biggest challenge ahead for the Fourth Amendment is how it should apply to computers and the Internet.

What the Fourth Amendment Fundamentally Requires by Barry Friedman

In the Supreme Courts decisions interpreting the Fourth Amendment, there are a lot of cross-cutting arguments.

For example, sometimes the Justices say that there is a strong preference for government agents to obtain warrants, and that searches without warrants are presumptively invalid. At other times they say warrants are unnecessary, and the only requirement is that searches be reasonable. At times the Justices say probable cause is required to support a search; at others they say probable cause is not an irreducible minimum.

This is your Fourth Amendment. It describes [t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. It is important for each American to focus on some basics and decideseparate and apart from what the Justices saywhat this vital amendment means.

People say that the Fourth Amendment protects privacy, but that trivializes it. In this world you give up a lot of privacy, whether you wish to or not. Internet cookies, or data stored in web browsers, are just one example. But the Internet companies are not going to come take you away. The government might. What the Fourth Amendment protects is the right of the people to be secure. The Fourth Amendment is the means of keeping the government out of our lives and our property unless it has good justification.

In evaluating how the Fourth Amendment should be interpreted, it is essential to bear in mind the vast changes in policing since the time it was ratified. Whereas policing once was reactive, tasked with identifying and catching criminals, today it has become proactive and is based in deterrence. Before, policing was mostly based on suspicion, it was aimed at people for whom there was cause to believe they had violated or were about to violate the law. Today, policing is aimed at all of usfrom red light cameras to bulk data collection by intelligence agencies to airport security.

There are some basic principles that should govern searches and seizures.

First, no member of the Executive branch should be permitted to intervene in our lives without the say-so of at least one other branch. This is fundamental, and all the more important when that Executive actor engages in surveillance of the citizenry and can use force and coercion against them.

Second, a central purpose of the Fourth Amendment is preventing arbitrary or unjustified intrusions into the lives and property of citizens.

In light of these basic principles, certain interpretations of the Fourth Amendment follow:

No search or seizure is reasonable if it is not based on either legislative authorization or pursuant to rules that have some form of democratic say in their making. The police can write rulesall other agencies of executive government dobut absent a critical need for secrecy those rules should be public and responsive to public wishes.

Second, warrants are to be preferred. Policing agencies are mission-oriented. We want them to bethey have a vital role protecting public safety. But because they are mission-oriented, warrants should be obtained in advance of searching whenever possible so that a neutral judge can assess the need to intrude on peoples lives.

Third, we should distinguish between searches aimed at suspects and those aimed at society in general. When there is a particular suspect, the protections of a warrant and probable cause apply. But those protections make no sense when we are all the target of policing. In the latter instance the most important protection is that policing not discriminate among us. For example, at airport security all must be screened the same unless and until there is suspicioncause to single someone out.

Finally, often todays policing singles out a particular group. Examples include profiling (based on race, religion, or something else) or subjecting only workers in some agencies to drug tests. When policing is group-based, the proper clause of the Constitution to govern is the Equal Protection Clause. When discriminatory searching or seizing occurs, the government should have to prove two things: that the group it is selecting for unfavorable treatment truly is more likely to contain people worthy of the governments attention, and that the incidence of problematic behavior is sufficiently great in that group to justify burdening everyone. Otherwise, the government should go back to either searching individuals based on suspicion, or search us all.

The Future of the Fourth Amendment by Orin Kerr

The biggest challenge ahead for the Fourth Amendment is how it should apply to computers and the Internet.

The Fourth Amendment was written over two hundred years ago. But todays crimes often involve computers and the Internet, requiring the police to collect digital evidence and analyze it to solve crimes.

The major question is, how much power should the police have to collect this data? What is an unreasonable search and seizure on the Internet?

Consider the example of a Facebook account. If you log in to Facebook, your use of the account sends a tremendous amount of information to Facebook. Facebook keeps records of everything. What you post, what messages you send, what pictures you like, even what pages you view. Facebook gets it all, and it keeps records of everything you do. Now imagine that the police come to Facebook and want records of a particular user. The police think the suspect used Facebook to commit the crime or shared evidence of the crime using the site. Maybe the suspect was cyberstalking and harassing a victim on Facebook. Or maybe the suspect is a drug dealer who was exchanging messages with another drug dealer planning a future crime. Or perhaps the suspect committed a burglary, and he posted pictures of the burglary for all of his Facebook friends to see.

Heres the hard question: What limits does the Fourth Amendment impose on the government getting access to the account records? For example, is it a Fourth Amendment search or seizure for the government to get what a person posted on his Facebook wall for all of his friends to see? Is it a search or seizure to get the messages that the suspect sent? How about records of what page the suspect viewed? And if it is a search or seizure, how much can the government seize with a warrant? Can the government get access to all of the account records? Only some of the account records?

The courts have only begun to answer these questions, and it will be up to future courts to figure out what the Fourth Amendment requires. As more people spend much of their lives online, the stakes of answering these questions correctly becomes higher and higher.

In my view, courts should try to answer these questions by translating the traditional protections of the Fourth Amendment from the physical world to the networked world. In the physical world, the Fourth Amendment strikes a balance. The government is free to do many things without constitutional oversight. The police can watch people in the public street or watch a suspect in a public place. They can follow a car as it drives down the street. On the other hand, the police need cause to stop people, and they need a warrant to enter private places like private homes.

The goal for interpreting the Fourth Amendment should be to strike that same balance in the online setting. Just like in the physical world, the police should be able to collect some evidence without restriction to ensure that they can investigate crimes. And just like in the physical world, there should be limits on what the government can do to ensure that the police do not infringe upon important civil liberties.

A second important area is the future of the exclusionary rule, the rule that evidence unconstitutionally obtained cannot be used in court. The history of the exclusionary rule is a history of change. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Supreme Court dramatically expanded the exclusionary rule. Since the 1980s, however, the Supreme Court has cut back on when the exclusionary rule applies.

The major disagreement is over whether and how the exclusionary rule should apply when the police violate the Fourth Amendment, but do so in good faith, such as when the law is unclear or the violation is only technical. In the last decade, a majority of the Justices have expanded the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. A central question is whether the good faith exception will continue to expand, and if so, how far.

In the Supreme Courts decisions interpreting the Fourth Amendment, there are a lot of cross-cutting arguments.

The biggest challenge ahead for the Fourth Amendment is how it should apply to computers and the Internet.

Excerpt from:
Amendment IV - The United States Constitution

More than 325,000 people enter the United States via airports every day, with hundreds of thousands more crossing by land at the borders. Not only is that a lot of people, its also a lot of computers, smartphones, and tablets riding along in our pockets, bags, and trunks. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment protections we enjoy inside the U.S. for our devices arent always as strong when were crossing bordersand the Department of Homeland Security takes advantage of it. On the other hand, the border is not a Constitution-free zone. What are the limits to how and how much customs and immigrations officials can access our data?

To help answer those questions, were offering the second in our series of posts on the Constitution at the border, focusing this time on the Fourth Amendment. For Part 1 on the First Amendment, click here.

The Fourth Amendment forbids unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. In most circumstances, the Fourth Amendment requires that government agents obtain a warrant from a judge by presenting preliminary evidence establishing probable cause to believe that the thing to be searched or seized likely contains evidence of illegal activity before the officer is authorized to search.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has sanctioned a border search exception to the probable cause warrant requirement on the theory that the government has an interest in protecting the integrity of the border by enforcing the immigration and customs laws. As a result, routine searches at the border do not require a warrant or any individualized suspicion that the thing to be searched contains evidence of illegal activity.

But the border search exception is not without limits. As noted, this exception only applies to routine searches, such as those of luggage or bags presented at the border. Non-routine searches such as searches that are highly intrusive and impact the dignity and privacy interests of individuals, or are carried out in a particularly offensive manner must meet a higher standard: individualized reasonable suspicion. In a nutshell, that means border agents must have specific and articulable facts suggesting that a particular person may be involved in criminal activity.

For example, the Supreme Court held that disassembling a gas tank is routine and so a warrantless and suspicionless search is permitted. However, border agents cannot detain a traveler until they have defecated to see if they are smuggling drugs in their digestive tract unless the agents have a reasonable suspicion that the traveler is a drug mule.

How does this general framework apply to digital devices and data at the border? Border agents argue that the border search exception applies to digital searches. We think they are wrong. Given that digital devices like smartphones and laptops contain highly personal information and provide access to even more private information stored in the cloud, the border search exception should not apply.

As Chief Justice Roberts recognized in a 2014 case, Riley v. California:

Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans the privacies of life.

Snooping into such privacies is extraordinarily intrusive, not routine. Thus, when the government asserted the so-called incident to arrest exception to justify searching a cell phone without a warrant during or immediately after an arrest, the Supreme Court called foul.

Why is the Riley decision important at the border? For one thing, the incident to arrest exception that the government tried to invoke is directly comparable to the border search exception, because both are considered categorical exemptions. Given that the intrusion is identical in both instances, the same privacy protections should apply.

Moreover, with the ubiquity of cloud computing, a digital device serves as a portal to highly sensitive data, where the privacy interests are even more significant. Following Riley, we believe that any border search of a digital device or data in the cloud is unlawful unless border agents first obtain a warrant by showing, to a judge, in advance, that they have probable cause to believe the device (or cloud account) likely contains evidence of illegal activity.

However, lower courts havent quite caught up with Riley. For example, the Ninth Circuit held that border agents only need reasonable suspicion of illegal activity before they could conduct a non-routine forensic search of a travelers laptop, aided by sophisticated software. Even worse, the Ninth Circuit also held that a manual search of a digital device is routine and so a warrantless and suspicionless search is still reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Some courts have been even less protective. Last year a court in the Eastern District of Michigan upheld a computer-aided border search of a travelers electronic devices that lasted several hours without reasonable suspicion.

EFF is working hard to persuade courts (and border agents) to adopt the limits set forth in the Riley decision for border searches of cellphones and other digital devices. In the meantime, what should you do to protect your digital privacy?

Much turns on your individual circumstances and personal risk assessment. The consequences for non-compliance with a command from a CBP agent to unlock a device will be different, for example, for a U.S. citizen versus a non-citizen. If you are a U.S. citizen, agents must let you enter the country eventually; they cannot detain you indefinitely. If you are a lawful permanent resident, agents might raise complicated questions about your continued status as a resident. If you are a foreign visitor, agents may deny you entry entirely.

We recommend that everyone conduct their own threat model to determine what course of action to take at the border. Our in depth Border Search Whitepaper offers you a spectrum of tools and practices that you may choose to use to protect your personal data from government intrusion. For a more general outline of potential practices, see our pocket guides to Knowing Your Rights and Protecting Your Data at the Border.

Were also collecting stories of border search abuses at: borders@eff.org

And join EFF in calling for stronger Constitutional protection for your digital information by contacting Congress on this issue today.

Continued here:
The Bill of Rights at the Border: Fourth Amendment Limits on Searching Your Data and Devices - EFF

Sandy Huffaker / AFP / Getty Images

ID: 10826375

Four privacy-minded lawmakers have introduced legislation requiring law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before searching phones belonging to US citizens, and prohibiting them from barring entry to Americans who decline to share their passwords at the border.

Americans Constitutional rights shouldnt disappear at the border, Senator Ron Wyden said in statement to BuzzFeed News. By requiring a warrant to search Americans devices and prohibiting unreasonable delay, this bill makes sure that border agents are focused on criminals and terrorists instead of wasting their time thumbing through innocent Americans personal photos and other data.

Some law enforcement agencies have asserted broad authority to conduct searches of devices at the border, the lawmakers contend, in a way that circumvents the Fourth Amendments protections. The lawmakers argue that searching devices even after obtaining permission to do so is an invasion of privacy that should be tightly controlled.

The bill would require law enforcement to establish probable cause before searching or seizing a phone belonging to an American. Manual searches, in which a border agent flips through a persons stored pictures would be covered under the proposed law as well. But the bill does allow for broad emergency exceptions.

The government should not have the right to access your personal electronic devices without probable cause, Rep. Polis told BuzzFeed news in a statement. Whether you are at home, walking down the street, or at the border, we must make it perfectly clear that our Fourth Amendment protections extend regardless of location. This bill is overdue, and I am glad we can come together in a bicameral, bipartisan manner to ensure that Customs and Border Patrol agents dont continue to violate essential privacy safeguards.

The lawmakers say that the bill extends the privacy principles clarified in the Supreme Court decision Riley v. California. In that case, the High Court ruled that warrantless searches of electronic devices during an arrest are unconstitutional.

In a letter to Homeland Security in February, Sen. Wyden asked the agencys chief, Secretary John Kelly, to reveal how many times Customs and Border Protection personnel had asked for or demanded US citizens disclose their phone, computer, email, and social media passwords in the past several years. Sen. Wyden also asked Secretary Kelly to explain what legal authority allows the CBP to demand those passwords and how such demands are consistent with the Constitution and federal law.

The Senator asked Secretary Kelly to respond by March 20. But according to Sen Wydens office, Homeland Security has not written back.

Follow this link:
New Bill Would Outlaw Warrantless Phone Searches At The Border - BuzzFeed News

Watergate was just a private break-in by private actors. To preclude either Watergate or Cointelpro from ever occurring again, and in response to Justice Douglas warnings about illegal uses of electronic surveillance, Congress passed laws to conform surveillance to the twin mandates of the First and Fourth Amendment.

The means our government uses to protect the First and Fourth Amendment rights of Americans without sacrificing the countrys security needs for information gathering on foreign threats is a process known as minimization and masking. The point of the minimization and maskingprotocolsis to insure Americas eavesdropping on foreigners safeguards the constitutional rights of U.S. persons. These protocols are not merely internal rules nor discretionary guidelines; they are the necessary legislatively delegated means required to protect theprivacyrights of U.S. persons provided for by the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution.Violating these provisions does more than violate mere regulatory restrictions; violating these provisions violates the Constitutional rights of Americans. That is why the law criminalizes such action when taken under color of law by rogue agents.

The law imposescriminalsanctions on government officials who engage in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statutes and governing regulations implementing those statutes. This same criminallawmakes a person guilty of an offense if she intentionally discloses or uses information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained in a manner not authorized by law. Notably, the law enforcementdefenseis limited to law enforcement or investigative officer cleared to do so by a search warrant or court order. The crime imposes a term ofimprisonmentup to sixty months in a federal prison.The point of the law criminalizing rogue agents either intercepting Americans conversations illicitly or unmasking they identities illegally is to protect against rogue government agents from abusing the most powerful surveillance means ever developed to invade the free speech, free thought, free expression and intimate privacy rights of all Americans.

According to both FBI DirectorComeyand NSA DirectorClapper, no warrant ever authorized the intercepts and electronic surveillance on a member of Trumps team. Yet, Chairman Nunesreportssuch intercepts occurred, identifying them as incidental. As law professor GlennReynoldsrecently noted, recent reports raise doubts on how incidental it was. And now,national security reporter Eli Lake ofBloombergNews reports note that former National Security Advisor SusanRice unmasked apparently some of Trump transition team members whentheir communications were caught in Americas Snowden-reported expansive surveillance web. It appears what Snowdenwarnedof how this wide net of eavesdropping would inescapably be misused by the Hoover-ites in the government may have cometrue.

The key question now is simple: what legal basis did Susan Rice have to order the unmasking of Trump team members? If the information was inadequate to justify a FISA warrant (or the Obama White House wanted to keep some members of the intelligence community out of the loop?), what permissible purpose justified the unmasking? How significant is this?

As the minimization and maskingprotocolscompel, the incidental information gathered by the NSA spying machine is legally protected from public disclosure and is to be used only for official purposes of National Security Agency/Central Security Services. All users with access must strictlyadhereto all classification and handling restrictions. Sound familiar?Who could ever imagine the Obama foreign affairs apparatusmishandlingclassified information? Who could ever imagine SusanRice, whose Secretary of State bid failed due to her Benghazi-implicated scandals, behaving badly? Who could ever imagine the Obama administration spying on Americans in dubious ways, like say, trying tosurveilthe Associated Press, spy on a Fox Newsreporter,eavesdropon his own allies, joke about drone bombing Wikileaks founderAssange, or trying to lock up morewhistleblowersthan all prior administrations combined?

Essential aspects of thoserulesrequire that intercepted communications between persons in the United States inadvertently intercepts during the collection of foreign communications will be promptly destroyed unless the Attorney General determine that the contents indicate a threat of death of serious bodily harm. As for communications that incidentally intercept an American and a foreigner, the information concerning U.S, persons must be disseminated in a manner which does notidentifythe U.S. Person. The only exceptions to this allowunmaskingwhen the communications concern varieties of probable cause of a crime, such as that the U.S. person is working as an agent of the foreign power to engage in criminal conduct, disclosing classified information without authorization, engaged in international narcotics activity, engaged in criminal activity, is the target of hostile intelligence activities of a foreign power, is terrorism connected, a threat to safety, or is an existing senior official. Of critical note, at all times theunmaskingmust made by the appropriate approval authority and must fit a need for the identity for the performance of his official duties. Note what is not present: unmasking for partisan aims, political purposes, or personal enmity. To be clear,we dont know why Susan Rice unmasked these identities, but given the political nature of this case, it is reasonable to question her motives.

Some defenders of Rice suggests she could label anything she wanted of foreign intelligence value, under the implementing regulatory protocols and thereby label it foreign intelligence information under the statute. The law is not so broad. Instead, the statute requires foreign intelligence information be necessary to the conduct of foreign affairs and to the persons position, and further employs a more limiting specific definition in the regulations in USSID for warrant-less seizures, as necessary to make it constitutional under the 4th Amendment. That definition is limited to criminal conduct type behavior, or its security equivalent. That is why the regulatory protocols give specific examples of the type of information that meet this standard of foreign intelligence value. What are those examples? Criminal-type behavior or imminent security risks. Why those restrictions? Because that makes it conform to the First and Fourth Amendment limitations on the intercept of Americans private political conversations. The examples are not prohibitive of like conduct being included, but it must belikeconduct e.g., criminal-type behavior or imminent-safety risk. Why? So it can be constitutional under the 4th Amendment, because the act of unmasking is an act of invading Americans privacy, covered by the 4th Amendment, and political speech in private is a right protected by the First Amendment. This is the biggest mistake the Obama defenders have been making, and reflects their lack of understanding of the laws Constitutional context and legislative history. Put most simply, neither the 1st Amendment nor the 4th Amendment has a talking to foreigners exception.

Hence, the reason Schiff was soshiftyon Jake Tapper on Sunday after Schiff read the unmasked intel at the invite of the White House last week. Was it because he saw unmasked identities on conversations that could not fit any of those very narrow, constricted, limited legal circumstances allowed? Susan Ricefeignedno knowledge of any incidental intercepts just a few a weeks back.Why say so if she thought it never happened and any unmasking was completely legal? (Note: A source close to Rice told CNN reporter Jim Sciutto that the idea that Ambassador Rice improperly unmasked the identities of Americans is false.)

Regardless, Susan Rice, and the Obama administration, appeared to have often skipped the Constitutional limits on their duties while in office; now might be a good time to buffup on the Fifth Amendment, and the right to counsel. Congress may be calling soon.

Robert Barnes is a California-based trial attorneywhose practice focuses on Constitutional, criminal and civil rights law. You can follow him at@Barnes_Law

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

Here is the original post:
Why Susan Rice's Reported 'Unmasking' of Trump Officials Raises Very Serious Legal Concerns for Her - LawNewz

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) told CNNs Chris Cuomo this morning that so-called Sanctuary Cities are actually Fourth Amendment Cities.

Heres how I see it yeah, they call them sanctuary cities. What I would say, Chris, is theyre Fourth Amendment cities.

Watch courtesy of CNN:

The DEA, the FBI, the ATF they get warrants right? They go and pick people up.

What [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] which is another federal law enforcement agency does is it wants to have people detained and wants the city of Chicago to go after people without any probable cause being submitted before the court and without a warrant.

If you supply a warrant to the city of Chicago, we will absolutely honor that warrant. But youve got to get a warrant.

Gutierrez is right. The Fourth Amendment says in language even a Republican should be able to understand, The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This is not what the Trump administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions want to hear. Sessions actually said on Monday that the Constitution makes our nation less safe:

Such policies cannot continue. They make our nation less safe by putting dangerous criminals back on the streets.

According to Sessions, cities that stand by the United States Constitution cannot have federal money, certainly a bizarre and unreasonable stance for an administration to take, given the presidents vow to defend and support that Constitution.

Donald Trump, fourth Amendment, Fourth Amendment Cities, immigration, jeff sessions, Luis Gutierrez, sanctuary cities, Sanctuary Cities Are Fourth Amendment Cities, Trump Deportations, United States Constitution

Originally posted here:
Rep Gutierrez Tells CNN Sanctuary Cities Are Actually 'Fourth ... - PoliticusUSA