Links Cited:
Charles International Law research guide on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency
ArcGIS 100-mile Border Zone Map Overlay
Southern Border Communities Coalition Map
Bloomberg CityLap Article Featuring Maps Prepared by ESRI
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Hey, good morning, everybody.
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It's Nate Charles again, back with another thought of the day.
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It's August 19th, 2025.
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So within the last couple of days,
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Charles International Law posted another research guide sort of laying out the
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duties of the Customs and Border Protection Agency and also explaining the
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restraints on the Customs and Border Protection Agency.
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One of the things that we discussed in that article was the enforcement zone
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within 100 miles of any land or maritime border of the United States.
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Just a couple of minutes after we posted that,
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a friend of mine and a colleague posted an article about an interaction between
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Customs and Border Protection and a group of people who were pulled over on
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suspicion of an immigration violation in San Bernardino,
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California.
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It turned into a shootout
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which made me curious whether San Bernardino is within the 100-mile enforcement radius.
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So I did some additional research on that and discovered,
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yes,
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San Bernardino is,
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unfortunately,
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for those people within the 100-mile enforcement radius,
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which gives Customs and Border Protection Agency some legal cover in terms of
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whether their stop was reasonable.
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It also set me down a rabbit hole to figure out whether there's actually a map,
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a public accessible authoritative map as to what terrain within the United States
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falls within that enforcement zone.
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The short answer is there's not any sort of map that is authoritative.
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CBP maintains range rings.
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within all their ArcGIS software to use for operational planning.
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But of course, those range rings are not publicly available.
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There are a lot of nonprofit organizations out there who have maps that show where
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those enforcement zones are.
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And some of them are pretty good, but they're not authoritative.
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If something is close to the line, it's not clear what sort of authority
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the courts would give those unofficial maps.
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I will include some links in the comments to some of those range rings so you can
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see for yourself where these nonprofits estimate the zone stop and start.
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But again, they're not authoritative for legal purposes.
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So just keep that in mind as you go forward.
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But I do think it's interesting.
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And I personally, I love maps.
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So
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It's probably something going back to my Navy days.
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But anyway, I hope you guys have a great day.
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I thought this stuff was pretty interesting and you might too.
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So we'll share that with you.
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And I'm looking forward to seeing you again tomorrow.
