A couple weeks ago, a US border patrol official held a gun to the head of ... a Boy Scout. A troop leader explains what happened now that the scouts and adult volunteers from Mid-Iowa Scout Troop 111 have returned from their 23-day trip: Ten days into the trip, their four vans attempted to cross from Canada into Alaska. One scout made an innocent error: He snapped a photo of a US border official. Troop Leader Jim Fox tells KCCI that officials detained everyone in that van and searched them and their luggage, and one agent confiscated the boy's camera, telling him "he would be arrested, fined possibly $10,000 and 10 years in prison." But it didn’t end there.
When another scout removed some luggage to comply with the search, Fox says the boy heard "a snap of a holster, and here’s this agent, both hands on a loaded pistol, pointing at the young man’s head.” No one was ultimately hurt or arrested—just scared—and after a four-hour ordeal, the group was allowed to enter Alaska. A Boy Scout official says the scouts learned an important lesson about being a "good citizen" and following rules. But as for that cited rule against photographing federal agents? It’s not exactly true. According to Reason.com, the American Civil Liberties Union says that photographing "things that are plainly visible from public spaces," including government officials, "is a constitutional right." (In other border news, a certain Texas governor plans to deploy 1,000 National Guardsmen to the southern one.)
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