Years ago, I drove through a Border Patrol station along a Southern California freeway in my little sports car. As a white guy in a Navy blazer, I wasn't surprised that the agents immediately waved me along—even as they questioned the Latino drivers around me, searched their trunks and thoroughly inspected their vehicles. I clearly didn't fit the profile of an illegal immigrant or Mexican drug smuggler.
By contrast, one time that I flew with my mom, whose 90-year-old body has its share of metal implants, TSA agents examined her as if she might be the member of a sleeper cell. It's just how it goes in TSA's Security Theater—although once I was diverted to a "random" line for extra vetting and noticed that I appeared to be the only person in line who didn't look Middle Eastern. What a coincidence.
My Border Patrol story reinforces an obvious point I've made to some of my Trump-supporting friends: The government almost certainly will use profiling to target criminal aliens, gang-bangers and even garden-variety illegal immigrants. Sometimes, liberal activists act as if racial/ethnic disparities in any given area necessarily prove racial discrimination. That's not always the case, but ethnic profiling always goes hand-in-hand with immigration enforcement.
