US border agents tried to confiscate the portable phone of a Wall Street Journal reporter. She managed to convince them it would make too much of a stink, and they backed off.

The DHS has enormous power to intrude into the lives of Americans that live within 100 miles of a border, which is nearly everyone.

It uses this power on only a small fraction of the people who are vulnerable to it, but the arbitrariness is still a bad thing.