Incident details
- Date of incident
- March 3, 2025
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
- Targets
- Anonymous reporter 8
- Border point
- Los Angeles International Airport
- Target nationality
- US citizenship status of target
- U.S. citizen
- Denied entry?
- No
- Stopped previously?
- No
- Asked for device access?
- No
- Asked intrusive questions about work?
- Yes
Border Stop
A freelance multimedia journalist was questioned about their immigration reporting on March 3, 2025, while passing through customs at California’s Los Angeles International Airport, pictured above.
A freelance multimedia journalist was questioned about their work covering immigration in the United States and Mexico while passing through U.S. customs in Los Angeles, California, on March 3, 2025.
The journalist, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for further issues while traversing the border for ongoing reporting, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that they have been traveling extensively between Mexico City and LA for work on “a lot of immigration stories.”
When flying into LA in early March, the questioning by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent was initially pretty standard, the journalist said.
“He asked me, ‘What were you doing?’ And that’s been the main question, which makes sense: I’m out in Mexico for a month, a month and a half at a time,” the journalist told the Tracker. “But then he started to ask about my work.”
They said the officer asked what outlets they were working for and what they had been reporting on.
“I couldn’t really tell if it was small talk or just wanting to pry a bit more about what I was working on,” they said. “It was kind of ironic, because he was asking me about immigration stories, and I was like, ‘Well, there’s a lot of asylum-seekers stuck in Mexico. You know, that’s what I’ve been looking into.’”
The journalist told the Tracker that they were released from the checkpoint without further incident. However, when flying into LAX again in May, they were pulled into secondary screening and held for an hour.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
