Journalist says a CBP officer withheld his passport until he agreed he writes 'propaganda' [View all]
Source: Washington Post
t took a moment for Ben Watson to realize the officer was not joking. Watson had just told the Customs and Border Protection staffer reviewing his passport that he works in journalism. Then, the seemingly routine Thursday encounter at the Washington Dulles International Airport got tense.
“So you write propaganda, right?” Watson, the news editor at the national security site Defense One, recalled the CBP officer asking. “No,” Watson says he replied. He affirmed again that he was journalist. The officer repeated his propaganda question, said Watson, who was returning from a reporting trip in Denmark. “With his tone, and he’s looking me in the eye — I very much realized this is not a joke,” Watson told The Washington Post on Friday. Watson said he got his passport back only after agreeing with the “propaganda” charge. The incident comes amid rising hostility faced by journalists as the Trump administration continues to attack the media as “fake news.”
Watson said he had heard a couple stories of similar encounters in the past, but said he did not realize until sharing his experience at the Dulles Airport on social media just how many people in his field were reporting the same brand of harassment. U.S. airport border agents were at the center of several incidents that have raised reporters’ concerns this year. “I’ve honestly never had a human attempt to provoke me like this before in my life,” Watson said he told his colleagues. “This behavior is totally normal now, I guess?”
Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that it is investigating the “alleged inappropriate conduct.”“We hold our employees accountable to our core values of vigilance, integrity and service to country, and do not tolerate inappropriate comments or behavior by our employees,” the agency said.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/10/04/journalist-says-cbp-officer-withheld-his-passport-until-he-agreed-he-writes-propaganda/
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