Press freedom groups warn of chilling effect after CBP seizes journalist’s phones
Press freedom groups are calling on U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to return cell phones it seized from fringe progressive writer Max Blumenthal, just days after far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer demanded that federal authorities arrest him.
The action is part of a war, it would seem, between fringe corners of the internet.
Still, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Blumenthal’s interrogation and device seizure last week at Washington Dulles International Airport is part of a growing pattern under President Donald Trump of federal officials using immigration authorities and policies to “create a chilling effect on free expression.”
Federal officials reportedly detained Blumenthal for more than two hours on July 10, questioned him about his reporting and confiscated his phones after he declined to unlock the devices with their passcodes.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a nonprofit civil rights organization, filed an emergency motion on Thursday in the Eastern District of Virginia demanding that Border Patrol return the phones. The motion argues that CBP’s actions violated Blumenthal’s free speech rights and constitute an unreasonable government search and seizure. The organization called for an expedited hearing “given the risk to his confidential sources.”
Agents detained Blumenthal, the founder and editor-in-chief of the independent, progressive news website The Grayzone, after returning to the U.S. from Iran, where he reported on the funeral of the country’s former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Blumenthal and other U.S.-based journalists attended the funeral on press visas granted by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, according to an article in The Grayzone outlining the ordeal.
Blumenthal and Customs and Border Protection didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Straight Arrow.
“When journalists from CNN, NBC, and other American outlets returned to the US, however, they were not subjected to the same harassment Blumenthal experienced, nor were they required to give the US government their electronic devices,” according to the outlet.
Did the government take Loomer’s lead?
Just days before border agents confiscated Blumenthal’s devices, Loomer, an outspoken right-wing activist and President Donald Trump loyalist who describes herself as an investigative journalist, demanded the feds arrest him.
“Radical leftist Max Blumenthal is currently in Iran participating” in Khamenei’s funeral with Iranian forces “and jihadists who are calling for ‘Death to America’ and for President Trump to be assassinated,” Loomer wrote in a July 5 post on the social media platform X.
If Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin “is worth anything,” Loomer wrote, he will order that Blumenthal be “taken off the plane” upon return to the U.S., have him “detained, and revoke his passport.”
Loomer didn’t respond to a request for comment from Straight Arrow.
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Global press freedom has fallen to its lowest level in a quarter of a century, according to the nonprofit Reporters Without Borders.
Upon his arrival to the U.S., officers questioned him about who funded his travel and whether he had been paid for the interviews he conducted in Iran, according to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Blumenthal declined to grant authorities access to his two phones before an officer confiscated them and reportedly warned the devices would be hooked up “to machines” to extract their contents. His laptop and camera weren’t similarly confiscated. The facts suggest that “agents were seeking access to Blumenthal’s private contacts and protected communications,” according to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Days later, on July 13, The Grayzone reported that Blumenthal had been targeted “by an Israeli doxxing outfit and Laura Loomer.” Canary Mission, an anonymous, Israel-based doxxing website, published on X a claim that Blumenthal traveled to Tehran “to honor” Khamenei, and described The Grayzone as “a far-left site” known for “positive coverage of the Chinese, Russian and Venezuelan governments.”
The government’s action prompted a celebration from Loomer.
“Arrest Max Blumenthal!” she posted on X.
Did Border Patrol violate the Constitution?
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee says the timing of Blumenthal’s detention — and his treatment compared to that of other U.S.-based journalists — is suspicious.
During Blumenthal’s detention, officers asked the journalist questions that “closely mirrored Loomer’s post,” which described him as a national security threat. The “overlap between Loomer’s demands” and the line of questioning from Border Patrol agents “raises serious questions that he was targeted because of his reporting and political viewpoint,” the civil rights group said in a media release.
Jenin Younes, the group’s president and legal director, said Americans’ Constitutional rights don’t evaporate while they’re crossing the border.
“While Fourth Amendment protections are diminished at border crossings, searches must be based on some interest in identifying criminal activity or national security threat,” Younes said. “The constitutional concerns become more severe when it appears a journalist was subjected to an unreasonable search because of his viewpoints and journalistic activity.”
On Monday, a federal appeals court ruled the government doesn’t need a warrant to search the phones of travelers as they return to the U.S.
“Border searches do not require a warrant to be reasonable,” U.S. Circuit Judge Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. wrote in an opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. “And if a border search is routine, individualized suspicion is not required either.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists, meanwhile, said the ordeal was part of a broader threat to press freedoms under the Trump administration, where the Department of Homeland Security has “increasingly used their powers to curb independent and critical reporting.”
Border Patrol officials “must respect the right of all journalists to carry out their work free from intimidation or interference, regardless of their editorial perspective,” Jose Zamora, CPJ’s regional director for the Americas, said in a media release.
The Trump administration’s use of immigration officials to “create a chilling effect on free expression,” Zamora said, makes “it all the more important that authorities refrain from actions that could be perceived as retaliation or intimidation.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
