NBC station KNSD San Diego (NBC 7) is reporting that the Trump Administration teamed up with the Mexican government to target journalists covering the migrant caravan, including denying some of them entry into Mexico later on.
That is according to documents it obtained from a Homeland Security source and posted on the station's website Thursday (March 7).
They apparently created a database of journalists, "media influencers," activists and attorneys and put alerts on some of their passports.
The cover page of the document, dated Jan. 9, 2019, identifies it as containing "suspected organizers, coordinators, instigators, and media."
In the months following the caravan, some of the journalists who covered it "said they felt they had become targets of intense inspections and scrutiny by border officials. One photojournalist said she was pulled into secondary inspections three times and asked questions about who she saw and photographed in Tijuana shelters. Another photojournalist said she spent 13 hours detained by Mexican authorities when she tried to cross the border into Mexico City. Eventually, she was denied entry into Mexico and sent back to the U.S."
The President complained about how the caravan was being covered, and ultimately used its threat as an excuse to close down the government because he could not get what he said were sufficient funds for border security. He also used it as a reason for declaring a national emergency so he could get the funding Congress wouldn't give him.
The source told the station that the database was used by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Border Patrol, Homeland Security Investigations and some agents from the San Diego sector of the FBI.
According to the Institute for Public Accuracy, the list includes 10 journalists, as well as three U.S. citizens identified as “Administrators of the Caravan Support Network Facebook Page.”
