[Infowarrior] - Administration Sued Over Phone Searches at U.S. Border

[Richard Forno]

Trump Administration Sued Over Phone Searches at U.S. Border

By Erik Larson
September 13, 2017, 12:25 PM EDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-13/trump-administration-sued-over-phone-searches-at-u-s-border

The Trump administration is increasingly allowing federal border agents to seize and search -- sometimes violently -- the mobile phones and laptops of U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants as they enter the country, two advocacy groups said in a lawsuit.

The searches at airports and at the Canadian border are being carried out without warrants in violation of the Constitution’s First and Fourth Amendments, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Boston.

The groups represent 10 U.S. citizens and one immigrant -- among them a military veteran, a journalist and a NASA engineer, the rights groups said in a statement. Several of the citizens are Muslims or people of color.

The lawsuit adds to a growing list of legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, including a travel ban against several Muslim-majority countries and the halt to a federal program allowing undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to avoid deportation, known as Dreamers.

“The government cannot use the border as a dragnet to search through our private data,” ACLU attorney Esha Bhandari said in the statement.

Physically Restrained

The lawsuit names as defendants the acting heads of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan declined to comment. Messages to the press offices of the other agencies weren’t immediately returned. On its website, Customs and Border Protection states it has the authority to search “all persons, baggage, and merchandise arriving in, or departing from, the United States.”

One plaintiff, independent filmmaker Akram Shibly, declined to give his phone to Customs and Border Protection agents while he was returning to the U.S. after a social outing in the Toronto area in January, the rights groups said. The officers then physically restrained him and took his phone from his pocket, with one agent choking him and another holding his legs, according to the statement.

“I joined this lawsuit so other people don’t have to have to go through what happened to me,” said Shibly, who is from upstate New York. “Border agents should not be able to coerce people into providing access to their phones, physically or otherwise.”

Other plaintiffs in the case include: Massachusetts limousine driver Ghassan Alasaad and his wife Nadia Alasaad, a nursing student; Suhaib Allababidi, a Texas business owner whose security technology clients include the federal government; Sidd Bikkannavar, an optical engineer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California; and journalist Jeremy Dupin.