A report from KNSD in San Diego suggests that the Trump administration is keeping files on and targeting journalists and lawyers for harassment because of their activism or even just news reporting at the border. In some cases, the report says, U.S. officials appear to be flagging the passports of people doing this work so that the Mexican government won’t let them in.
The anecdotes included in this report are deeply troubling and well worth reading in full. Here are just a few examples:
The report goes on to detail the harassment to which targeted individuals, such as U.S. citizen and freelance photojournalist, Kitra Cahana, were subjected:
“They were interested in whether I had an assignment when I was going down to cover the caravan,” Cahana said. “And they wanted to know how I was funding my work.”
Cahana said she was asked to explain how freelance photojournalism works, which she found strange. Afterward, her passport was flagged again in Detroit but eventually, she was allowed to board her flight and fly to Mexico City.
But when she arrived in Mexico, her passport was flagged again. Cahana said she brought this to a Mexican official and was taken into a back room with another group of detained individuals.
There, Cahana said her phone was taken away and she couldn’t leave the room. When she needed to use the restroom, an agent escorted her.
“I wasn’t allowed to be in communication with anyone, I wasn’t allowed to contact my embassy,” Cahana said. “It was very confusing because my Spanish is quite limited and no one there really spoke English.”
Cahana said the whole ordeal lasted 13 hours and in the end, she was denied entry into Mexico. She had to wait until a plane arrived that could take her back to Detroit, where her flight originated.
Now, given the Trump administration’s handling of national security issues at the southern border, real and manufactured, it isn’t surprising that such blatant violations of press freedom should occur.
But it should add to the alarm about what exactly the president and his supporters in Congress are really worried about at the border: details on what’s actually happening or championing a self-serving and often demonstrably false official narrative.
On a more basic level, robust judicial advocacy and freedom of the press, even the press that you don’t like, is at the heart of a functioning democracy. Harassing or targeting journalists, photographers, and lawyers is incompatible with the principles of the First Amendment.
That the Trump administration would use border crossings through placing alerts on passports to prevent journalists and lawyers from interacting with migrants, including asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico while their claims are processed, is unacceptable and an affront to the systems the government is supposed to defend.
Besides, you’d think that Trump, such an avowed critic of harassment, would be against it more broadly. Apparently not.
PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 7, 2019
