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Inside the Massive U.S. ‘Border Zone’

Bloomberg [May 14, 2018 article worth revisiting now] All of Michigan, D.C., and a large chunk of Pennsylvania are part of the area where Border Patrol has expanded search and seizure rights. Here’s what it means to live or travel there…the border zone is home to 65.3 percent of the entire U.S. population, and around 75 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population, according to a CityLab analysis based on data from location intelligence company ESRI. This zone, which hugs the entire edge of the United States and runs 100 air miles inside, includes some of the densest cities—New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. It also includes all of Michigan and Florida, and half of Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to a prior rough analysis by Will Lowe, a data scientist at MIT. (Border Patrol considers the boundary of the Great Lakes to be the “functional equivalent” of the border, per government documents revealed in an ACLU lawsuit. Elsewhere, too, the agency interprets the international boundary in a way that concerns the ACLU.) The first of the three maps ESRI created for CityLab show the population density within the 100-mile zone…CBP and DOJ guidance also allow border patrol agents to profile under certain conditionsa remarkable fact given that 72 percent of the U.S. minority population lives in the 100-mile zone. Some of the highest concentrations are in areas where the border patrol presence is the heaviest. This map shows minority share of the population within the 100-mile zone. There are almost two times the number of people of color inside the zone and three times the number of Hispanics, compared to the non-border zone portion of the country.”

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