Abstract
Those who criticise governments or cover controversial subjects are increasingly stopped at borders in the USA, Mexico and Cuba. What are the implications? asks
“They were looking for the basis to set up a criminal case,” Castro told Index. “The US government wants to charge [activists] with helping people cross the border. Any assistance you provide could lead to charges.”
Castro’s screening last year was not an isolated incident but part of an international drive to use borders to stem the free flow of information. Journalists and activists are increasingly pulled aside with demands to access their social media accounts.
In recent years, authorities in the USA, Mexico and Cuba have stirred up fear around borders – harassing travellers who document or oppose government abuses. Freedom of expression specialists now worry that the overall impact of a swathe of harsh measures at these borders and others could result in people reining in their speech and involvement in protest because of worries that it will prevent them from travelling.
Digital security expert Ela Stapley (see p32) who worked as a journalist in Mexico for five years, said: “People are likely to self-censor if they believe that their online criticism of a certain country or government will hinder their chances of obtaining a visa. This is an effective way for governments to try and control what people are saying online and it is one of a number of ways that governments around the world limit freedom of expression.”
She added: “Journalists and human rights defenders worry about how best to protect themselves, their families, and also people they are working with or seeking to protect.”
A recent report by Amnesty International argued that US President Donald Trump was waging a politically motivated campaign against activists and journalists at the US-Mexican border. The report said border agents had systematically targeted people because of “their protected views or expression”. Press freedom groups have also voiced concern about the crackdown, which includes enhanced searches of electronic devices at borders and demands for travellers to hand over their social media passwords.
“[These powers] create a climate in which journalists are operating under suspicion,” said Courtney Radsch, advocacy director for the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Three months after Castro’s screening, an unidentified Department of Homeland Security official leaked screenshots to the news outlet NBC 7. The documents confirmed the existence of a secret database of individuals the US government had targeted with migratory alerts and secondary screenings and Castro’s name was among the 59 on the San Diego region watchlist.
The surveillance measures form part of Operation Secure Line, which monitors migrants and asylum-seekers in Mexico – many of whom arrived in the caravans that began forming in central America in October last year. With the Trump administration turning away thousands of asylum requests, many people are stranded along Mexico’s northern border.
US Customs and Border Protection initially claimed the watchlist was a response to a breach of the San Diego border in November last year. But one US photojournalist on the list, Ariana Drehsler, told Index she was not present during that incident. Despite this, she was subjected to three screenings shortly after Christmas. During the third interview, agents asked her to leave her camera and phone outside, and then requested access to her photos. She refused.
In May, CBP reworked its explanation for the surveillance measures. In a letter, the agency justified the watchlist by referencing a federal law which an appeals court has already deemed unconstitutional. That law permits the investigation of “any person who ‘encourages’ or ‘induces’” a migrant to enter the USA.
“That’s really disturbing, because we weren’t encouraging anyone,” Drehsler told Index. “I feel I was transparent. But there is no real transparency coming from their end.”
Drehsler has not been stopped while crossing the border since January and is unsure whether the alert is still active, but she is now worried about carrying electronic devices across borders, as doing so might expose her subjects and sources.
In April, two citizen rights groups – the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union – filed a federal lawsuit against warrantless border searches, which they say have nearly quadrupled since 2015.
Mexican immigration officials have also harassed human rights defenders in response to alerts from US authorities. Nora Phillips, the legal director and co-founder of Al Otro Lado, an organisation providing legal services for asylum-seekers, was denied entry into Mexico at Guadalajara airport on 1 February. She was detained for nine hours with her seven-year-old child and officials provided no food and drink, even when Phillips begged for water so she could swallow the medication she requires for a serious genetic disorder.
Phillips was sent back to Los Angeles and she has been unable to leave the country since.
“You have [migratory alerts] because there are really dangerous human beings,” Phillips told Index. “You don’t use them to silence and geographically limit political dissidents.”
Amnesty believes the effort to block the entrance of human rights defenders into Mexico appears to be “targeted and co-ordinated”, as part of a bi-national US-Mexico initiative that is ostensibly designed to combat human smuggling.
According to Amnesty, the Trump administration is deliberately conflating the concept of humanitarian work with the crime of human smuggling. The organisation says the effort is a breach of international law, which defines a human smuggler as someone who exploits migrants for material gain. On 5 June, two leading migrant rights activists, Irineo Mujica and Cristobal Sánchez, were arrested in Mexico on human smuggling charges. Two days later, Trump announced he was lifting the threat of tariffs on Mexican goods. The president justified the move by citing the “strong measures” Mexico had agreed to take to stem migration. Nevertheless, a Mexican court ordered the release of Mujica and Sánchez the following week. The lawyers for both defendants demonstrated they were hundreds of miles from Mexico’s southern border at the time they allegedly took payment for transporting migrants. However, the case remains open and Mujica has suffered police harassment since.
A US border patrol agent opens a metal door separating the USA and Mexico in San Ysidro. It is one of the busiest land crossings in the world
CREDIT: Jorge Duenes/Reuters
“The authorities want to create panic in the population,” Mujica told Index. “They want to deter people from providing humanitarian aid to migrants, even though offering that aid is legal in Mexico.”
What is happening in the USA and Mexico is comparable to the politicisation of travelling across borders in other regions of the Americas.
Cuba has long resorted to barring or deporting foreign nationals whose views they don’t like. In May, the government expelled two Mexican artists for allegedly trying to “sabotage” the Havana Biennial art exhibition.
However, Cuban authorities most commonly block the free movement of those looking to leave, not enter. Such bans aim to limit the spread of information that reflects negatively on the country’s communist regime.
Cuban journalist Yoani Sánchez was denied permission to leave the country on 20 occasions, beginning in 2008. According to Sánchez, the ban was a retaliation for her blogging, which the government described as part of a “cyberwar” against Cuba. As a result, Sánchez was unable to collect freedom of speech awards in Spain, Austria and the USA. The ban was finally lifted under Cuba’s sweeping migration reform in 2013.
A member of the Mexican National Guard patrols the banks of the Rio Bravo at the border between Mexico and the USA in Cludad Juarez, Mexico, July 2019
CREDIT: Daniel Becerril/Reuters
“I still have to pass through special controls where security personnel warn me about the opinions I offer in foreign countries,” Sánchez told Index. “But I can leave without any greater obstacles.”
She says the Cuban authorities still use access-to-travel as a mechanism of control. The reporter Luz Escobar, who works for Sánchez at the independent digital media outlet 14ymedio, has been prohibited from leaving since January 2018. Digital journalist Iliana Hernández is also barred from foreign travel.
However, Sánchez believes the hardening of borders against free expression in the Americas is becoming more futile, as technology opens up new spaces for communication.
That was certainly evident in June, when a Mexican reporter photographed the lifeless bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, a Salvadoran migrant, and his daughter Valeria, who had drowned trying to swim the Rio Grande into US territory.
The Mexican newspaper La Jornada initially published the image and it spread rapidly on social media before it was republished in newspapers around the world, becoming a grim reminder of the human cost of Trump’s policies.
In Cuba, Sánchez promotes the flow of information by offering classes on how to use the internet and how to bypass the island’s closely-monitored network.
“Social media has become a meeting point for people separated by migration,” she said. “Authorities can try to regulate digital information but it’s becoming very difficult to control.”