In Guan v. Wolf, five journalists were tracked by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other government agencies, and then detained, and interrogated by CBP officials when attempting to re-enter the United States. In response to this unprecedented coordinated attack on the freedom of the press, Plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit alleging violations of their First Amendment rights on November 20, 2019.

Bing Guan, Go Nakamura, Mark Abramson, Kitra Cahana, and Ariana Drehsler are all U.S. citizen professional photojournalists. Between November 2018 and January 2019, they separately traveled to Mexico to document people traveling north from Central America by caravan in an attempt to reach the U.S.-Mexico border. Border patrol agents referred each journalist to secondary inspection on their return to the United States and questioned them about their work as photojournalists, including their coverage of the caravan, their observations of conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border, and their knowledge of the identities of certain individuals. This questioning focused on what each journalist had observed in Mexico in the course of working as a journalist, and did not relate to any permissible immigration or customs purpose. A secret government database leaked to NBC San Diego in March 2019 revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had engaged in wide-ranging intelligence collection targeting activists, lawyers, and journalists—including these five journalists—working on issues related to the October 2018 migrant caravan and conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The five journalists filed this action alleging that CBP’s questioning aimed at uncovering their sources of information and their observations as journalists was unconstitutional. They seek a declaratory judgment that such conduct violated the First Amendment. The journalists further seek an injunction requiring the government to expunge any records it retained regarding the unlawful questioning and to inform the journalists whether those records have been disclosed to other agencies, governments, or individuals.

For more information, including key court filings, please visit: https://holdcbpaccountable.org/2020/06/24/guan-v-wolf/

Attorney(s)

Mitra Ebadolahi, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLUF SDIC; Esha Bhandari, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy, & Technology Project; Scarlet Kim, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project; Antony Gemmell, Staff Attorney, NYCLU

Date filed

November 20, 2019

Court

Eastern District of New York

Judge

Pamela K. Chen

Status

Active

Case number

19‐cv‐06570‐PKC