Left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker was detained and interrogated at Chicago O’Hare airport on Sunday after returning from a trip to Paris. Many have taken the incident as a dire indication of the “constitutional and civil liberties–related perils” that the Trump administration poses.

What’s been most surprising about the Department of Homeland Security’s detention of Piker is that, despite its concerning implications, it was perfectly legal. As Ken Klippenstein lays out here:

Though the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure, the Supreme Court has recognized a so-called border search exception. This authority applies to anyone located within 100 miles of a land border or coastline — the “border zone” — which incidentally covers over two-thirds of the US population.

The border search exception has a long legal history, though some of its details — like whether or not an electronic device can be searched at the border without suspicion of criminal wrongdoing — have only been debated in the last decade. But one does not need to go to the border to find a shredding of the Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment, which protects people from “unreasonable searches and seizures,” has effectively been optional for four decades.

The invalidation of the Fourth Amendment arguably started in 1970 with the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Law professor G. Robert Blakey, who formulated the basics of RICO for the Senate Judiciary Committee, was searching for new tools to combat organized crime — tools that would allow authorities to seize not just illicit profits but all assets associated with illegal activity. RICO did just that: once someone was proven guilty of a crime, all assets associated with the illegal behavior could be seized.

For Senator Joe Biden, RICO didn’t go far enough. For one, real estate was still excluded from seizure, and police couldn’t seize assets until prosecutors filed an indictment — an inconvenient hurdle for law enforcement. To toughen crime policy, Biden teamed up with segregationist senator Strom Thurmond to draft the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act. In addition to establishing mandatory minimum sentences, the act also allowed law enforcement to seize assets based on mere “probable cause.” As journalist Dan Baum summarized, under the new legislation, law enforcement

could confiscate, with no more “proof” than was required for a search warrant, cash, cars, boats, homes, bank accounts, stock portfolios — anything believed to have been purchased with drug money or equal in value to the money believed earned from drug sales. No charge, indictment, trial, or conviction was necessary, and the burden of proof was placed on the person whose assets were seized.

The bill also allowed police to keep the proceeds of forfeited assets. Money, cars, homes — anything police linked to suspected criminal activity — were now all potential revenue to bolster local law enforcement budgets.

One might think that there are still safeguards in place to prevent an abuse of this power. Police still need enough proof to get search warrants, right? Technically, yes, but in the Supreme Court’s 1983 Illinois v. Gates ruling, the justices decided that police can base warrants on anonymous tips. And in United States v. Leon (1984), they ruled that “evidence seized under tainted warrants is admissible provided the police [meet] a subjective standard of ‘good faith.’” With these two precedent-altering cases, nothing prevents police from calling in their own tips or simply lying on their warrant requests.

By the time Gates, Leon, and the 1984 crime bill had taken effect, little remained of the Fourth Amendment — or, arguably, key protections in the Fifth.

Hasan Piker’s detainment doesn’t represent a legal anomaly. Rather, it reveals a more fundamental lack of individual protection against unreasonable search and seizure. In the United States, authorities don’t need to prove guilt to detain and interrogate someone — and far worse can result from arousing their suspicion.

Any politician looking for a winning issue in 2026 or 2028 could do worse than “Restoring the Bill of Rights.” The encroachment upon personal freedoms that the Trump administration has wrought in the name of punishing their political enemies offends against most Americans’ sense of fairness. But this encroachment unfortunately bears the backing of the law, and it has for some time.

A comprehensive restoration of the Bill of Rights would no doubt be a very popular proposal, and perhaps it could also be a point of entry for reintroducing and defending the need for a second Bill of Rights. The rights and freedoms of the individual are still powerful ideas that resonate with Americans across the political spectrum.

The lesson of Piker’s detainment is, then, not simply that people with certain politics face new risks. It’s that all Americans lack the civil liberties they imagine themselves to possess — and that reclaiming those rights presents an opportunity to rally the most basic of democratic impulses.