U.S. Customs and Border Protection is deploying secret teams that target, detain, and interrogate innocent travelers.
In November 2018, three CBP officers detained a traveler, at the San Francisco International Airport after he landed from a business trip to Sweden. The traveler who was a former chief technology officer at Mozilla Corporation and current Apple employee, was given no reason as to why he was detained asides from a ticket with the letters TTRT on it.
What the traveler didn’t know is that he was being stopped a secret group that forms part of the CBP, and the ticket he had received with the initials means Tactical Terrorism Response Teams. The CBP has deployed agents to at least 46 airports and other U.S. ports of entry.
There have been cases where those who are stopped are free to go after the whole interrogation, but in others the victim is not so lucky. One of the cases saw a man who was traveling to reunite with his pregnant wife only to be stopped, questioned and denied entry.
Treatment to travelers who are stopped by the CBP’s secret group is disturbing, and they are not isolated incidents. CBP officials mention that the teams are explicitly targeting individuals who are not on any government watchlist, what is even more concerning from this secret group is that they are given the power to act on their "instincts" or hunches to target travelers. This worries many, as this creates a risk to these groups since there can be cases that are biased and unlawful for profiling travelers on basis such as race, religion, ethnicity, or national origin. It may also result in officers detaining and questioning travelers because of their speech or associations, which may be protected by the First Amendment.
Since 2017 alone, these teams denied entry to over 1,400 individuals with valid travel documents.
Civil right groups are demanding that information about these secretive groups to be made known to the public as they have the right to know how these teams operate, how their officers are trained, and whether the guidelines that govern their activities contain civil liberties and privacy safeguards.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups are suing the Customs and Border Protection, and are demanding to have records concerning units that are deployed at airports to be released and to disclose requested records to the civil rights groups.