Abstract
American history is littered with threats and attempts at mass deportation. The Trump administration’s announced policy of mass deportations is the most recent manifestation of such a policy and one that perhaps poses an unprecedented threat to the rights and liberties of noncitizen communities. The administration’s aggressive rhetoric, militarized border policy, and embrace of new technology together portend a new era of surveillance and control over noncitizen communities. This threatens to supercharge previous and ongoing surveillance efforts within the immigration enforcement paradigm, such as the Department of Homeland Security's Alternatives to Detention (“ATD”) program. These programs place participants under a variety of surveillance mechanisms and have grown exponentially in recent years, but they have received insufficient constitutional scrutiny. This is in part because of the difficult questions raised by Supreme Court precedent which classifies many noncitizens as “persons,” not “people” and thus places them outside the scope of Fourth Amendment protections.
The Fourth Amendment has been subject to substantial litigation in criminal investigations, but the implications of these cases for surveillance in the civil immigration context remain underdeveloped. This Article seeks to bridge that gap. As immigration policies evolve, the increased adoption of surveillance tools on noncitizen populations raises critical questions about the balance between policy objectives, national security imperatives, and individual constitutional rights. This Article explores the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures as it applies to noncitizens inside the United States.
To this end, this Article focuses on the seminal and sole case to date where the Supreme Court considered the Fourth Amendment Rights of noncitizens in the United States: United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990). It presents a critique of the tensions created by this constitutional precedent, proposing new recommendations for safeguarding individual liberties within the context of the modern immigration apparatus.
Recommended Citation
Juan Caballero,
"People" Not "Persons": Noncitizens and the Fourth Amendment,
59 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 317
().
Available at: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol59/iss2/1
