Five American photojournalists sued the Department of Homeland Security, alleging the U.S. government violated their First Amendment rights by tracking, detaining, and investigating them for reporting on conditions at the southern border last year.
The American Civil Liberties Union announced Thursday a lawsuit against acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and other department officials for how Customs and Border Protection officers in San Diego, California, carried out an “unprecedented, coordinated attack on the freedom of the press” late last year and into 2019.
“A core principle of our democracy is the freedom of the press. That freedom is imperiled when the government uses the pretext of border screening to interrogate journalists who were simply doing their jobs,” Esha Bhandari, staff attorney with ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a news release about the lawsuit.
The five freelance photojournalists — Bing Guan, Go Nakamura, Mark Abramson, Kitra Cahana, and Ariana Drehsler — were identified in a leaked internal CBP list of people, including media, whom it was tracking in connection with a major riot that occurred near the San Ysidro port of entry on Nov. 25, 2018. The document leaked in March to NBC San Diego included people’s photos and identifying information.
Each of the five journalists had been detained by CBP after attempting to reenter the United States from Mexico at a port of entry. Some were detained more than once in December and January, according to the complaint.
“Plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that such questioning and compelled disclosure of information violated the First Amendment,” the complaint states. “They also seek an injunction requiring Defendants to expunge any records they have retained regarding the unlawful questioning and to inform Plaintiffs whether those records have been disclosed to other agencies, governments, or individuals.
The lawsuit alleges the U.S. government targeted the reporters because of their vocation and tried to force them to share information about their sources and what they saw as migrants rushed the border. Officers also went through the photographers’ pictures and notes.
“This questioning focused on what each Plaintiff had observed in Mexico in the course of working as a journalist, and did not relate to any permissible immigration or customs purpose,” the complaint states.
“When I saw my photo crossed out in a secret government database, I realized the secondary screening and interrogation wasn’t random. I was being targeted by my own government for reporting on conditions at the border,” Guan said in a statement.
“Journalists are democracy’s first line of defense,” Cahana said in a statement. “We need to be able to work without fear of being put on a secret government surveillance list or having alerts placed upon our passports. This interference effectively prevented me and other journalists from carrying out our reporting at the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s an issue that should concern everyone.”
On Nov. 25, 2018, hundreds of migrants rushed a port of entry and the land near it in an attempt to gain entry from Tijuana, Mexico. CBP officers deployed tear gas on some people. Forty-two people were arrested in the incident, but none were referred for prosecution, CBP said.
Both DHS and CBP did not respond to requests for comment.
