first_published_at,last_published_at,title,slug,latest_revision_created_at,charges,legal_orders,updates,categories,links,equipment_seized,equipment_broken,targeted_journalists,authors,date,exact_date_unknown,city,state,latitude,longitude,body,introduction,teaser,teaser_image,primary_video,image_caption,arrest_status,arresting_authority,release_date,detention_date,unnecessary_use_of_force,case_number,case_statuses,case_type,status_of_seized_equipment,is_search_warrant_obtained,actor,border_point,target_us_citizenship_status,denial_of_entry,stopped_previously,did_authorities_ask_for_device_access,did_authorities_ask_about_work,assailant,was_journalist_targeted,charged_under_espionage_act,subpoena_type,subpoena_statuses,name_of_business,third_party_business,legal_order_target,legal_order_type,legal_order_venue,status_of_prior_restraint,mistakenly_released_materials,type_of_denial,targeted_institutions,tags,target_nationality,workers_whose_communications_were_obtained,politicians_or_public_figures_involved 2019-11-08 17:34:13.141128+00:00,2024-02-29 20:04:09.611447+00:00,"Journalist, graduate student stopped again for secondary screening",https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/journalist-graduate-student-stopped-again-secondary-screening/,2024-02-29 20:04:09.526397+00:00,,,"(2021-06-28 00:00:00+00:00) Supreme Court declines to hear case on warrantless electronic device searches at border, (2019-11-12 12:40:00+00:00) Federal court finds warrantless searches of devices violates Fourth Amendment of travelers",Border Stop,,,,Zainab Merchant (Independent),,2017-09-16,False,Orlando,Florida (FL),28.53834,-81.37924,"
Zainab Merchant, a graduate student at Harvard University and founder of online publication Zainab Rights, was stopped for secondary screening by Customs and Border Protection officers in Orlando, Florida, on Sept. 16, 2017.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security on Merchant’s behalf. According to the organizations, Merchant was returning from a personal trip to Morocco with her husband when they were both redirected to secondary screening.
As was the case with Merchant’s previous stop catalogued by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, the officer who questioned her asked about her article on her experience crossing the border in 2016 and asked what she aimed to accomplish by writing it. According to the complaint, the officer also said, “Please don’t write anything bad about us.”
The complaint also details that a CBP officer overheard Merchant speaking with another woman about their experiences while waiting in the screening area and reportedly said to them that when you fly, you sign off all your rights. “Do what you want, get a lawyer, get the courts involved, and do the redress, but you’ll never be able to get off,” the officer is quoted as saying.
Merchant and her husband were held in secondary screening for approximately three hours before being released.
Merchant did not respond to the Tracker’s requests for comment.
The complaint states that three months after the incident, Merchant received a voicemail from a DHS officer who identified himself as Agent Newcomb. He said, in regards to her security experiences every time she travels, that he “would like to come up with a solution that could make everyone happy.”
Merchant later met with Agent Newcomb and another officer who identified himself as Agent Jerome. The officers asked if she knew anyone who had been “radicalized,” hinting that if she provided them information they could resolve her travel issues. She declined to meet with them again.
The complaint states that the years of heightened security screenings has had a severe impact on Merchant. “She avoids flying if possible and experiences extreme frustration, anxiety, and humiliation when she does fly,” the complaint says.
In a 2018 opinion article in The Washington Post, Merchant wrote that her experiences being targeted for prolonged secondary screenings exposed the shifting values in America: “Its greatest qualities of freedom, liberty and opportunity have undoubtedly shaped the person I am today. But these values are slowly diminishing, and those liberties are being taken away from us little by little. I fear one day we will be unable to recognize it as the place we called home.”
Isma’il Kushkush — a former acting bureau chief of the New York Times in East Africa and International Center for Journalists fellow — was stopped at the U.S.-Canadian border in Vermont on July 30, 2017, while driving back from Montreal.
Kushkush, a Sudanese-American dual citizen, is one of 11 plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Massachusetts. According to the legal complaint, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers directed him to a secondary screening area.
After waiting for an hour, an officer instructed Kushkush to unlock his phone, threatening to seize it if he did not comply. Stating that he was doing so against his will, Kushkush unlocked his phone. According to the complaint, the officer wrote down the password and took the phone out of Kushkush’s sight for at least an hour.
According to the complaint, three hours after Kushkush was initially detained, he was escorted to a separate area where officers questioned him about his journalistic work. The complaint does not detail what questions the officers asked him during that time.
After a total of three and a half hours in the inspection area, Kushkush was released.
Kushkush has reported being detained at the border on at least five previous occasions between 2013 and 2016. He said that these stops lasted between two and three hours and frequently involved requests for access to his electronic devices. CBP officers also directed Kushkush to secondary screening in Jan. 2017, detained him for almost two hours and searched his notebooks and cellphone.
In 2018, Kushkush told the Committee to Protect Journalists, “Clearly I was singled out. It was clear that there was a pattern, that I was specifically being, you know, targeted and questioned about my whereabouts.”
Kushkush said the screenings made him more hesitant around traveling and reporting abroad.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker includes incidents only from 2017 forward.
On Nov. 12, 2019, a federal court in Boston ruled in favor of Kushkush and the other plaintiffs in the ACLU and EFF’s case against DHS, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP. The court found that warrantless searches of electronic devices at the border violate the Fourth Amendment, The Associated Press reported. Moving forward, border officers must now demonstrate individualized suspicion before searching a traveler’s device.
In a press release from EFF, ACLU attorney Esha Bhandari said, “This ruling significantly advances Fourth Amendment protections for millions of international travelers who enter the United States every year.”
“By putting an end to the government’s ability to conduct suspicionless fishing expeditions, the court reaffirms that the border is not a lawless place and that we don’t lose our privacy rights when we travel,” Bhandari said.
Zainab Merchant, a graduate student at Harvard University and founder of the online publication Zainab Rights, was subjected to secondary screening and her devices searched by Customs and Border Protection officers at preclearance in Toronto, Canada, on March 5, 2017.
Merchant is one of 11 plaintiffs in a pending lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Massachusetts. According to the legal complaint, filed in Sept. 2017, Merchant was returning to the U.S. after visiting her uncle in Toronto. When CBP officers directed her to secondary inspection, they took her laptop and and ordered her to turn over her smartphone.
Merchant objected, in part because her phone contained pictures of her without her headscarf that she did not want the male officers to see, but also because it contained information and communications related to her blog. According to the complaint, a CBP officer told her that her phone would be seized indefinitely if she did not comply.
“In tears, Ms. Merchant unlocked her phone. She also provided the password to unlock her laptop,” the complaint added.
During the hour and a half that Merchant’s electronic devices were out of her sight, CBP officers thoroughly searcher her bags, read her graduate school notebooks and questioned her about her religious affiliation and her blog. Officers specifically asked about an article she had written for Zainab Rights describing her experience at the border in 2016 which was critical of CBP’s actions.
Merchant spent approximately two hours in the inspection area before she was permitted to leave for the boarding area. When her devices were returned, her Facebook app was open to her friends list, which was not the case when she turned over her phone.
According to a separate complaint the organizations filed with DHS on Merchant’s behalf in 2018, when she arrived at the boarding gate, she underwent another pat-down.
The complaint states that Merchant was also subjected to additional screening when she landed in Newark, New Jersey for her connecting flight. The Transportation Security Administration officer checking Merchant’s boarding pass told her she would need to pass through security again, a process which took an hour and caused her to miss her flight.
In a 2018 opinion article in The Washington Post, Merchant outlined how she was detained for secondary screenings multiple times in the previous two year period, including one in 2016 that involved her husband and then-6-month-old baby for six hours. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker includes incidents only from 2017 forward.
In the Post, Merchant said that as the stops continued she filed a complaint through DHS’s Travel Redress Inquiry Program, wrote to members of Congress and applied for TSA Precheck and CBP Global Entry, programs designed to expedite domestic and international travel. She said her efforts were to no avail.
“Am I being stopped because I am Muslim, or because my family once traveled to Iran to visit a holy shrine? Is it because of my criticism of U.S. policies on the multimedia website I run to raise awareness about injustices around the world? Maybe it’s all three,” Merchant wrote. “Federal officers have asked me about my writing and religion, both of which are protected by the First Amendment.”
Merchant did not respond to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker’s requests for comment.
New York-based independent filmmaker Akram Shibly was stopped by border authorities and his phone searched for the second time in four days when returning to the United States from Canada on Jan. 4, 2017, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Shibly and 10 others, including three journalists.
Shibly was first stopped for secondary screening and his cellphone searched when returning from a work trip to Toronto on Jan. 1, the complaint stated.
Three days later, Shibly was again returning home from Toronto to Buffalo, New York, via the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge. In the secondary screening area, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer again ordered him to hand over his phone. Shibly refused.
The complaint alleged that three officers physically restrained him in order to seize the device:
“One of the officers squeezed his hand around Mr. Shibly’s throat, causing Mr. Shibly to suffer great pain and fear of death,” the lawsuit stated. “Another officer restrained Mr. Shibly’s legs, and a third officer pulled Mr. Shibly’s phone from his pocket.”
In a 2019 affidavit, Shibly said that the screen lock on his cellphone was still disengaged as a result of the first stop, and the device was taken to a separate room and presumably searched for 15-20 minutes.
He described both searches as an invasion of his privacy. “I felt abused and unwelcome returning home,” Shibly said. “I felt like CBP invaded my personal and professional life, and to this day I am still traumatized by these invasive practices.”
The ACLU and others filed the lawsuit in September 2017 against the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP, arguing that the plaintiff’s First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated.
On Nov. 12, 2019, a federal judge in Boston ruled in favor of Shibly and the other plaintiffs, finding that warrantless searches of electronic devices at the border violate the Fourth Amendment, The Associated Press reported.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First District overturned the federal district court's ruling restricting device searches and, in a judgment filed Feb. 9, 2021, instead denied the plaintiffs’ claims.
“We find no violations of either the Fourth Amendment or the First Amendment,” Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch wrote in the court’s findings. The ruling held that advanced searches of electronic devices at the border do not require a warrant or probable cause, and that basic border searches of electronic devices are routine searches that may be performed without reasonable suspicion.
The ACLU and EFF filed a motion on April 23 petitioning the Supreme Court to hear the case, but the court declined in June, effectively ending the lawsuit.
“Nobody should fear having border agents rummage through their most private information for no good reason,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s speech, privacy and technology project, said in a statement to Reuters. Wessler added that the Supreme Court will still need to address the privacy issues raised by warrantless searches at the border soon, given disagreements among lower courts.
Isma'il Kushkush — a former acting bureau chief of the New York Times in East Africa and International Center for Journalists fellow — was stopped at the border on Jan. 3, 2017, after arriving on a flight from Israel.
Kushkush, a Sudanese-American dual citizen, told the Committee to Protect Journalists that Customs and Border Protection officers were waiting for him as he got off from the plane and took him to the inspection area where they went through his bags and notebooks. He said that he was detained for about an hour and a half. Officers searched through his notebooks and one officer asked for his cellphone.
Kushkush has reported being detained at the border on at least five previous occasions between 2013 and 2016. He said that these stops lasted between two to three hours and frequently involved requests for access to his electronic devices.
International passengers arrive at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles
",None,None,None,None,False,1:17-cv-11730,['DISMISSED'],Civil,returned in full,False,law enforcement,Dulles International Airport,U.S. citizen,False,True,yes,yes,None,None,False,None,[],None,None,None,None,None,None,False,[],,,"Sudan, United States",, 2023-06-29 16:54:55.976094+00:00,2024-02-29 20:06:21.795193+00:00,Filmmaker forced to unlock phone at U.S.-Canada border crossing,https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/filmmaker-forced-to-unlock-phone-at-us-canada-border-crossing/,2024-02-29 20:06:21.702601+00:00,,,,"Border Stop, Equipment Search or Seizure",,cellphone: count of 1,,Akram Shibly (Independent),,2017-01-01,False,Lewiston,New York (NY),43.17256,-79.03588,"New York-based independent filmmaker Akram Shibly was stopped by border authorities and his phone searched when reentering the United States from Canada on Jan. 1, 2017, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Shibly and 10 others, including three journalists.
According to the lawsuit, Shibly was returning from a work trip in Toronto via the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge in New York when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer directed him to a separate area. There officers directed him to fill out a form that included a request for his cellphone password. Shibly initially left the line blank.
“A CBP officer examined the completed form and ordered Mr. Shibly to provide his password. Mr. Shibly told the officer that he did not feel comfortable doing so,” the complaint stated. “In an accusatory manner, the officer told Mr. Shibly that if he had nothing to hide, then he should unlock his phone.”
Feeling he had no other choice, the lawsuit stated that Shibly unlocked and disengaged the screen lock, also disclosing his social media handles when asked. CBP officers then left the room with the device for at least an hour.
Shibly was stopped again at the same border crossing again three days later, where his phone was forcibly taken from him.
The ACLU and others filed the lawsuit in September 2017 against the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CBP, arguing that the plaintiff’s First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated. In a 2019 affidavit, Shibly described the searches as an invasion of his privacy.
“I felt abused and unwelcome returning home,” Shibly said. “I felt like CBP invaded my personal and professional life, and to this day I am still traumatized by these invasive practices.”
On Nov. 12, 2019, a federal judge in Boston ruled in favor of Shibly and the other plaintiffs, finding that warrantless searches of electronic devices at the border violate the Fourth Amendment, The Associated Press reported.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First District overturned the federal district court's ruling restricting device searches and, in a judgment filed Feb. 9, 2021, instead denied the plaintiffs claims.
“We find no violations of either the Fourth Amendment or the First Amendment,” Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch wrote in the court’s findings. The ruling held that advanced searches of electronic devices at the border do not require a warrant or probable cause, and that basic border searches of electronic devices are routine searches that may be performed without reasonable suspicion.
The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a motion on April 23 petitioning the Supreme Court to hear the case, but the court declined in June, effectively ending the lawsuit.
“Nobody should fear having border agents rummage through their most private information for no good reason,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s speech, privacy and technology project, said in a statement to Reuters. Wessler added that the Supreme Court will still need to address the privacy issues raised by warrantless searches at the border soon, given disagreements among lower courts.