Returning Americans are routinely asked such general questions.
"I told him I was a journalist," Dinges said, "conducting journalistic business in Chile and Venezuela."
But that did not satisfy the agent, whose name tag identified him as "Adams," Dinges said.
He said the agent demanded to know "exactly" where he went and whom he met with.
"I told him I was not comfortable answering those kinds of questions," said Dinges, who has written three books on Latin America.
But the agent was adamant.
"He said, 'This is the United States, and I can ask you anything I want,'" Dinges recounted.
The agent said, "You have to answer, for me to assess your status."
When Dinges again objected, saying, "I feel protected under the Constitution," the officer told him, "If you don't want to talk, we can go to the back room, and you can discuss this with my supervisor."
Boxed In
Feeling threatened, and having to catch a connecting flight within the hour, Dinges relented, and "started to talk about meetings and where and who I'd talked to."
"I felt I had to keep talking and give him details until he was satisfied," said Dinges, who was also a foreign desk editor for the Washington Post, and reported frequently for the paper from Latin America. He joined the Columbia faculty in the 1990s.
The agent responded, "I didn't cross the line," Dinges said.
"I wanted to say it didn't matter what you think but what the law is, because we're a nation of laws, not individuals," Dinges said. But he bit his tongue.
"Clearly he can ask me whatever he wants to, but it was the pressure to reveal who I was talking to that crossed the line," Dinges said on Monday. "I felt I had the right to refuse to answer those kinds of detailed questions. He disagreed."
And, Dinges added, "It was clear that if I didn't answer his questions, they would put me in a back room and interrogate me. I didn't have the time."
As it turns out, Customs and Border Protection officers can indeed ask anyone, including journalists, anything, according to spokesman Michael Friel.
Nothing Special
"There are no special procedures for dealing with a journalist," Friel said in an interview.
"The officer's role is to protect the borders" and "determine a person's admissibility to the United States."
Friel declined to discuss the Dinges incident, but said such questioning is designed to determine whether a person is conducting "illicit activity abroad (and) to determine whether a person was doing legitimate activity abroad."
"There are no specific guidelines about reporters," he added.
The organization has been focusing on CPB's practice of seizing and copying data from passengers' laptops at ports of entry, he said.
"They do feel they don't have to have any sorts of constraints," he maintained.
![[RSS]](http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/templates/images/rss_icon.gif){kind=icon}
![[ARCHIVES]](http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/templates/images/archives_icon.png){kind=icon}
Comments
Border agent jobs are to check passports, etc. - not to be dicks about it. I've run into a couple who definitely have attitude.
Posted by: mike in Seattle
| July 1, 2009 2:47 PM
The Agent really should only be asking pertinent questions as to admissibility to the United States. If you are a citizen there is never any bar to admissibility. They can play games of course, but down the road you can file a Bivens action for violation of civil rights. Don’t let these guys intimidate you and promptly file a complaint with the DHS Inspector General with copies to your Senator. The more this happens the more likely they will change their attitudes. Personally I don’t put up with their shit but that can get you on a watch list to be sent to secondary for the customs related questions wherein they can get away with busting balls longer.
Posted by: Alois Brunner
| July 5, 2009 6:46 PM
Post A Comment