Incident details
- Updated on
- Date of incident
- December 29, 2018
- Location
- San Diego, California
- Targets
- Bing Guan (Independent)
- Case number
- 1:19-cv-06570
- Case status
- Settled
- Type of case
- Civil
- Border point
- San Ysidro Port of Entry
- 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
- Equipment searched or seized
- Status of equipment
- Searched without seizure
- Search warrant obtained
- No
Equipment Search or Seizure
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents look toward the Mexican border at the San Ysidro border in San Diego, California in November 2018.
Journalists settle suit against DHS over border stops
A group of journalists who sued the government over border officers’ questioning of journalists about their work settled the suit on Jan. 26, 2026, in New York, New York, federal court, according to court documents reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
Journalists Bing Guan, Mark Abramson, Kitra Cahana, Ariana Drehsler and Go Nakamura, sued in November 2019 after a series of border stops in late 2018 and early 2019, during which all five were asked intrusive questions about their coverage of a Central American migrant caravan’s arrival in Mexico. Three had equipment searched by border officers.
The suit accused the government of violating the First Amendment and named the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement as defendants. The complaint notes that pictures of all five journalists appear in a DHS compilation of journalists, activists and attorneys connected to the migrant caravan.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the plaintiffs along with law firm Covington & Burling, announced that the settlement required CBP to “issue guidance to certain CBP units regarding the First Amendment and Privacy Act protections that apply when questioning journalists at the border,” and to act “to ensure that the journalists’ past reporting at the U.S.-Mexico border should not serve as a basis for future border questioning.”
The settlement also includes “an amount for costs and attorneys’ fees.” ACLU attorney Esha Bhandari declined to provide additional information about the settlement terms.
“We are thankful to have secured redress for these journalists, to allow them to do their jobs reporting on the news free from unjustified government scrutiny,” Bhandari said.
Guan said: “It’s clear the government’s actions were meant to instill fear in journalists like me, to cow us into standing down from reporting what is happening on the ground. After being targeted for doing just that, I am grateful for what our lawsuit has achieved in defending the rights of journalists to report free from government officials’ scrutiny.”
Cahana said: “My biggest fear is that other journalists may have avoided important stories out of fear of being targeted themselves. Press freedom is not a partisan issue. Everyone should be alarmed when journalists are targeted.”
Photojournalists sue DHS, agencies after questioned about caravan coverage
Independent photojournalist Bing Guan and four other photojournalists filed a lawsuit against the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Nov. 20, 2019.
The plaintiffs were each questioned by CBP officers from November 2018 to January 2019 about their work covering the Central American migrant caravan’s arrival to Mexico. In March 2019, it was revealed that DHS officials in San Diego had created a database of journalists, activists and attorneys who were involved in some way with the migrant caravan.
“This lawsuit challenges U.S. border officers’ questioning of journalists about their work documenting conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border,” the suit begins. “The border officers’ questioning aimed at uncovering Plaintiffs’ sources of information and their observations as journalists was unconstitutional.”
The suit seeks a ruling that such questioning violates the First Amendment and an injunction requiring the agencies to expunge any records or files about the photojournalists. The suit remains ongoing as of January 2022 and discovery is underway.
Bing Guan and Go Nakamura, American photojournalists, were pulled into secondary screening on Dec. 29, 2018, while driving through the San Ysidro point of entry, a border crossing between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers separated Guan, who was driving his car, and Nakamura and questioned them individually. Guan told the Committee to Protect Journalists that he was questioned by two plainclothes CBP agents, one of whom produced a tear sheet with photographs of people who had been around the caravan. Guan told CPJ that the agents showed him two or three sheets of photo arrays “with between 9 and 12 photos” on each page. These included some photos that appeared like mugshots and others that seemed like surveillance photos.
Guan told The Intercept that he recognized two individuals as anti-migrant activists and thought that a third was associated with Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an immigrant rights group. Guan said that the CPB agents referred to the people in the photos as “instigators.”
Guan was asked to open his camera and show photographs, which he did, reasoning that it would be too dark to identify anyone, according to the account in The Intercept.
Likewise, Nakamura told CPJ that a CBP officer asked him to show his photographs to prove he was a photographer. The officer then showed Nakamura photographs of 20 people and asked whether he had seen them in Mexico. Nakamura said that he was not given an explanation of who the people were.
Two days prior to the secondary screening, Nakamura and Guan were stopped by Mexican municipal police officers who photographed their passports.
A few weeks before he was pulled into secondary screening, Guan had driven through the same San Ysidro port of entry without any issues, he said.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogs press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
