'I am a citizen': when border patrol agents violate the rights of US residents

Tom Dart in Arizona
Saturday 6 June 2015 12.00 BST

It is a simple question that Carlota Wray has come to regard as an insult: “Are you a US citizen?”

For the record, the answer is yes: Wray has lived in the US for more than 30 years, is married to an American and became a naturalised citizen about a decade ago. But she resents being quizzed about her immigration status, and is sometimes asked to prove it, when she leaves her home in the tiny Arizona border town of Arivaca for routine trips to neighbouring places a couple of times a week.

So do a number of other Arivaca residents. They have stepped up protests against a Border Patrol road checkpoint just outside the town, complaining that it is ineffective, a nuisance, an invasion of civil rights and an invitation for agents to conduct racial profiling.

Dozens of people from Arivaca – population about 600 – held a demonstration on 27 May demanding the closure of the checkpoint, which has been in place for eight years. At the same time, six other Arizona border communities held events in what organisers termed a “day of action calling for demilitarisation”.

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