Times bureau chief questioned by customs officers when flying into NYC

Jeffrey Gettleman, then-East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times, was questioned about his journalistic work and travel when arriving from Kenya at an airport in New York, New York, in the summer of 2017.

Gettleman told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker in 2025 that he had flown from Nairobi to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and then on to John. F. Kennedy International Airport.

When he went through passport control, Gettleman said, the automated machines at U.S. customs flagged his picture with a black “X,” requiring him to report to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent for further screening. Officers directed him out of the main immigration line and took him to a secondary screening room.

“They asked me ‘Where have you been and why? Why were you in these different countries?’ because my passport had stamps from places like Somalia or Libya,” Gettleman said. “They asked me what I did for The New York Times, how long I had worked there, why I traveled so much.”

Gettleman said the questioning lasted about 15 minutes and he was then permitted to leave without further incident.

He noted, however, that he had been similarly stopped while taking the same route from Nairobi to New York City in July 2016. During that stop, he was questioned for approximately an hour, including about his sources and contacts, as well as his colleague, Isma’il Kushkush — who was himself stopped twice for secondary screening by CBP officers in 2017. Officers also asked Gettleman to unlock his computer to allow them to search it, but he refused.

“I have a lot of sensitive information given to me in confidence and information from people across the world who did not want their identity revealed, and I did not want that to be compromised,” Gettleman told the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2018. “Some of this is serious, and people could lose their lives if it were revealed that they had given me information. People were risking their lives to give me information that governments did not want out.”

Gettleman confirmed to the Tracker that he hadn’t been flagged for additional screening by CBP since 2017.

Editor’s Note: Gettleman told the Tracker he couldn’t remember precisely when the incident took place beyond the year and season; the Tracker has therefore recorded the date generically as July 2017.