U.S. Customs and Border Protection is deploying secret teams that target, detain, and interrogate innocent travelers. We’re suing to expose their activities.
In November 2018, three CBP officers detained Andreas
Gal, a former chief
technology officer at Mozilla Corporation and current Apple employee, at San
Francisco International Airport after he landed from a business trip to Sweden.
Andreas was offered no reason for the detention, except a receipt from a Global
Entry kiosk that was marked with the letters “TTRT.”
The officers asked Andreas questions
that focused on his First Amendment-protected speech and activism. Andreas is
an outspoken proponent of online privacy and has spoken publicly about his
opposition to warrantless mass surveillance and views on the current
administration’s policies. The officers also repeatedly sought to search Andreas’
electronic devices, which included the contact information of his family and
friends, correspondence, and further information about his opinions and views.
Andreas, a U.S. citizen, was eventually allowed to leave. Abdikadir Mohamed, an immigrant, was not so lucky.
Abdi was at JFK International
Airport in December 2017. On his way to board a connecting flight to reunite
with his pregnant wife and his daughter in Columbus, Ohio, two CBP officers approached him. By that point, Abdi had already
cleared immigration and security screenings. Nevertheless, the officers asked
to examine Abdi’s stamped documents, and his boarding pass, which he provided.
Unsatisfied, they asked him to come to a separate room for additional
questioning, and told him to unlock his cell phone.
After 15 hours of interrogation, the
officers declared Abdi ‘inadmissible’ and sought to deport him. Abdi chose to
contest his deportation and seek asylum, following which he was sent to ICE
detention in New Jersey. After 19 months in detention, an immigration
judge granted
Abdi’s asylum claim and reunited him with his family in the United States.
CBP’s treatment of Andreas and Abdi
is disturbing, and they are not isolated incidents. We now know that the
officers that targeted Andreas and Abdi are part of a secretive team CBP has
deployed to at least 46 airports and other U.S. ports of
entry. We also
learned during Abdi’s asylum proceeding that these teams are called Tactical
Terrorism Response Teams, which we now know explains the acronym, TTRT, printed
on Andreas’ Global Entry receipt.
While TTRTs operate largely in
secret, we know from public statements by CBP officials that the teams are explicitly targeting individuals who are not on any government
watchlist — as flawed
as even those are — and who the government has never
identified as posing a security risk. Even more concerning, former CBP
Commissioner and former acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan has
indicated that TTRT officers may rely on
their “instincts” or hunches to target travelers.
An officer’s reliance on
“instincts” creates the risk that these secretive teams are targeting travelers
based on explicit or implicit biases. Such targeting may result in unlawful
profiling if officers detain, search, and/or question travelers on the basis of
their race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin. It may also result in
officers detaining and questioning travelers because of their speech or
associations, which may be protected by the First Amendment. Finally, these
teams’ activities raise due process and fairness concerns when information
inappropriately gathered by them results in further government scrutiny, such
as placement on a government watchlist.
In fiscal year 2017 alone, these
teams denied entry to over 1,400 individuals with valid travel documents.
There is still a lot that we don’t know about these secret teams, and CBP failed to respond to our request for information. Now, together with the New York Civil Liberties Union, we’re asking a federal court to order the agency to turn over information about these secretive teams.
The public has a right to know how these
teams operate, how their officers are trained, and whether the guidelines that govern
their activities contain civil liberties and privacy safeguards. We also want
to know just how many individuals are subject to detention, questioning, and/or
denial of entry into the U.S. by these teams, and the basis for these decisions.
There can be no meaningful
accountability if there is no transparency. For too long, the government has acted
as if it has carte blanche at the border. It’s time to shed light on the shadowy
operations of CBP’s secret teams.