Customs & Border Patrol targeting journalists

Journalism is under attack in this country, as in all authoritarian regimes.  Here's one aspect:

In February, The Intercept published a report, based on 19 sources, revealing that U.S. and Mexican authorities worked together in a sprawling intelligence-gathering effort aimed at journalists, immigration lawyers, and migrant rights advocates in the Tijuana-San Diego area. Photojournalists on the ground described being approached by Mexican police who photographed their passports. When asked who they were taking those photos for, one of the police officers replied, “For the Americans.”

[...]

Revealed last week in documents obtained by an NBC News investigative team in San Diego, the [government’s secret list of border troublemakers] included 13 “organizers,” eight “instigators,” and 10 journalists with varying descriptions.

[...]

The documents, provided by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower, confirmed and advanced, in critical ways, the evolving story of joint U.S. and Mexican government intelligence-gathering operations on the border — though key questions remain. In a bipartisan letter released Monday, Sens. Ron Wyden and Chuck Grassley called on U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to provide an unclassified briefing on the operations by Thursday. The senators, who head the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, which oversees CBP, expressed particular concern about the press freedom issues at play.

“Unless CBP had reason to believe the individuals in question were inciting violence or physical conflict, it is deeply concerning that CBP appears to have targeted American journalists at our borders,” they wrote.

[...]

“Let’s be clear: This is unconstitutional,” American Civil Liberties Union staff attorneys Esha Bhandari and Hugh Handeyside wrote.

  The Intercept

That's the new America under Trump and Mitch McConnell.

It involved each of the major agencies of the U.S. border security apparatus — Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Border Patrol — working with Mexican counterparts and the FBI, under the umbrella of the controversial joint DHS-Pentagon border initiative known as Operation Secure Line (formerly known as Operation Faithful Patriot), which the Trump administration initiated in the run-up to the 2018 midterms.

Authorities compiled dossiers on journalists and advocates, and in some cases, restricted their ability to travel following multi-hour detentions in Mexico. As they attempted to cross back into the U.S., the government’s targets were subjected to extended interrogations about individuals working with the migrant caravans. [...] Journalists were presented with photo lineups of activists and asked who they knew. Their notes and electronic devices were searched. Agents were directed to send the intelligence they collected back to Washington, D.C.

[...]

In the wake of NBC’s reporting, Reps. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., and Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., who both chair committees on homeland and border security, sent a letter to McAleenan, the CBP commissioner, demanding that his agency turn over the documents referenced in the story. Those documents are also due to be delivered Thursday, per the lawmakers’ request.

CBP has said that its Office of Professional Responsibility has opened an inquiry into the reports. The DHS inspector general’s office has also opened an investigation into the matter.

Those ought to really get to the heart of the matter.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.