Tag: border patrol

Border Agents Are Randomly Seizing Phones of US Citizens Who Support Palestine

Florida lawyer Jalal Shehadeh is convinced that the warrantless seizure of his cell phone by federal agents at the Newark International Airport after he returned from Palestine this September was not random.

Shehadeh, a Miami-based attorney and Palestinian rights advocate, was held for several hours for a secondary inspection and had his phone seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after he refused to allow federal agents to search it.

“It’s just a wildly invasive thing to do to somebody with no individualized justifiable basis to do it,” Shehadeh told Truthout.

He suspects federal authorities targeted him for his activism. The lawyer is involved in a legal complaint against a federal judge in Florida over the judge’s anti-Palestinian statements.

Shehadeh is one of several Palestinian rights advocates who have been detained and had their personal devices searched by CBP while returning to the U.S. from international travel since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.

Other similar cases include Amir Makled, a lawyer from the Detroit area who was representing University of Michigan students involved in pro-Palestine activism, journalist Max Blumenthal, and Osama Abu Irshaid, the executive director of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).

Jenin Younes, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which filed a legal motion earlier this week demanding the return of Shehadeh’s phone, said CBP appears to be escalating phone searches against opponents of President Donald Trump’s agenda.

“Common sense tells us that they are targeting people who have pro-Palestine views,” Younes told Truthout.

She stressed that the searches are illegal. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects “persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Younes said the “border exception” that allows searches to ensure that no illegal items are brought into the country should not apply to phones.

Younes, a civil liberties attorney, said the authors of the Constitution would have certainly opposed giving the government blanket authority to search people’s phones without cause.

“Law enforcement can search shipping vessels coming into the Boston harbor to make sure that they don’t have contraband. That’s a totally different thing from searching the contents of people’s smartphones,” she said. “I don’t think the framers would have thought that you could read the papers of somebody coming into the country in their suitcase, and likewise, a smartphone, which has so much more personal information.”

The case of Shehadeh and other Palestinian rights supporters targeted for searches at the border has reignited the debate over the application of constitutional protections at ports of entry.

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Two Deported Child Sex Predators Busted Illegally Re-Entering the U.S. After Deportation

Border Patrol agents in Eagle Pass nabbed two convicted sex offenders attempting to re-enter the United States in less than one week. In each case, the agents discovered the two had been previously deported from the United States after being convicted of sex crimes against children.

On September 6, Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents assigned to the Eagle Pass Station were patrolling the banks of the Rio Grande when they encountered two illegal aliens attempting to elude apprehension. After arresting the pair, agents conducted a biometric search of criminal databases on the pair and determined one of the individuals was a previously convicted sex offender.

Johan Alexander Moncada-Narvaez, a 40-year-old Venezuelan national, was determined by the agents to have been convicted of charges related to prostitution and electronic solicitation involving a 14-year-old girl in Moorhead, Minnesota in October 2025. According to court records, the minor child victim reported Moncada-Narvaez had sexually assaulted her on more than one occasion and had given the victim money after the assaults, threatening her with violence if she reported it.

According to a report in The Watch MN, Moncada-Narvaez received a suspended sentence after being convicted in Clay County District Court of Prostitution-Engaging a 14- to 15-year-old- and felony electronic solicitation of a child after entering an Alford Plea. Moncada-Narvaez received credit for 258 days served in the Clay County Jail at the time of conviction in July 2026. According to the Border Patrol, Moncada-Narvaez was deported from the United States on August 7.

After waiting less than one month to attempt a return to the United States, Moncada-Narvaez now faces up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted for illegally reentering the United States as an aggravated felon.

Just three days after Moncada-Narvaez’ arrest, Border Patrol agents assigned to the Eagle Pass South Station were patrolling a rural ranch not far from the border when they arrested two illegal aliens. Upon further investigation, one of the illegal aliens, Jose Enrique Vasquez-Nicolas, a 31-year-old Mexican national, was determined to be a convicted sex offender.

According to the Border Patrol, Vasquez-Nicolas was convicted in 2020 in Castro County, Texas, of indecency with a child and sentenced to five years’ confinement. Vasquez-Nicolas is a registered sex offender in Texas whose photo and conviction details appear on the state’s Sex Offender Database. According to state records, the victim in Vasquez’ case is a 16-year-old female.

After serving his sentence, Vasquez-Nicolas was deported to Mexico on June 28, 2026. Within three months, Vasquez-Nicolas would attempt to return to the United States illegally without success. As a returning aggravated felon, Vasquez-Nicolas faces a charge of 8 USC § 1326 (reentry after deportation), which carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Anthony “Scott” Good commented on the arrests, saying, “Child sex offenders who repeatedly cross our borders are an imminent threat to our communities. U.S. Border Patrol agents are our safeguard against this menace.”

As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers remove the “worst of the worst” offenders, the Border Patrol faces the daunting challenge of making sure they do not successfully re-enter the United States. Agents in the Del Rio Sector are finding more illegal aliens attempting to return as time passes.

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U.S. Robotics Company Says Humanoid Robots Could Patrol Border

Foundation Robotics, a U.S.-based startup, has discussed deploying its Phantom MK1 humanoid robots along the southern border, according to a ZeroHedge report citing a Fox News interview with CEO Sankaet Pathak [1]. Pathak said the machines are designed to navigate rugged terrain that can be difficult for vehicles, drones and fixed cameras. He said potential deployment missions could center on monitoring remote border areas, inspecting tunnels, and flagging migrant crossings for human agents.

The company develops humanoid robots for industrial and military applications, and the report described the border proposal as part of a broader move of physical AI and humanoid robots from factories and homes into conflict zones and other high-risk environments. The report also cited recent episodes of mass migration, including the invasion of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta by military-aged men, as examples of what it called weaponized migration flows. A DHS spokesperson told Fox News that the department “currently does not have any non-contractual agreements, pilots, or active prime contracts with Foundation.” The statement did not address whether demonstrations had occurred, and no formal arrangement has been announced.

Pathak says pilot could begin quickly

Pathak said a limited pilot could begin immediately and a larger deployment could follow within several months, according to the same report. He said the company is in conversations with “almost all national security government bodies,” including the Air Force, Navy, Army and DHS. The company is starting to negotiate contracts and applications for some of those bodies, he said.

In early March, Foundation co-founder Mike LeBlanc told TIME that the company is in “very close contact” with DHS regarding possible patrol deployments along the southern border, the report said. A separate summary of the TIME reporting said Foundation’s Phantom MK1 units were being evaluated for battlefield use while discussions about potential roles in U.S. border security continued [3].

Neither DHS nor Foundation has confirmed a timeline for those discussions. The border patrol proposal depends on robots operating in terrain that agencies currently monitor with personnel and equipment.

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US Customs supervisor busted for stealing Core i7 CPUs, RAM, and hard drives from Homeland Security PCs, damage estimated at $105,800 — stolen tech swapped with inferior hardware and cashed out on Newegg

According to a report from The Maine Wire, the FBI has arrested and charged Terry “Jiajia” Liu, a Customs and Border Protection supervisor based in Calais, Maine, for theft and damage to government property. Liu allegedly stole computer hardware, including Intel 14th Generation Raptor Lake Refresh processors, memory modules, and hard drives, from at least 46 Department of Homeland Security computers across three Maine border facilities. They replaced the stolen parts with inferior hardware and exchanged the stolen equipment through Newegg’s trade-in program for store credit.

Liu’s official responsibilities were limited to information-technology support, so they did not have access to modify any government computer. Port Director Theodore Cummings made the restriction abundantly clear to Liu in a written order: “Please do not move any computers or computer parts.” However, criminals rarely listen.

Hidden surveillance cameras captured Liu opening government computers and swapping hardware during the midnight shift. The perpetrator would take the systems to a training room to commit the crime. One camera recording showed Liu using a screwdriver to scrape thermal paste off a processor and installing a replacement chip in one system. Meanwhile, another recording caught Liu removing a memory module from a system and storing it in their desk drawer.

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MS NOW Crew Rescued by Border Patrol After Blunder in the Texas Desert

A far left MS NOW news crew traveled to the southern border seeking a story about immigration and government plans for border barriers.

Instead, the crew produced an accidental comedy after becoming stranded in the remote Texas desert and requiring help from Border Patrol agents.

The network formerly known as MSNBC dispatched correspondent Antonia Hylton and her crew to the Big Bend region of Texas for the debut of “The Assignment.”

Their reporting trip took them to the Alvarado Ranch, where the group apparently discovered that desert terrain does not care about media credentials.

Shortly after leaving the ranch, the crew ran into trouble when its Jeep Wagoneer became stuck as daylight faded.

The same federal agents regularly criticized by left-wing media outlets suddenly became the people the stranded journalists desperately needed.

“As the sun went down, our Jeep Wagoneer bottomed out in the desert,” Hylton said.

That is one way to describe a vehicle becoming firmly acquainted with the unforgiving Texas landscape.

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Chinese National Working as CBP Supervisor at Maine-Canada Border Caught on Camera Swapping Hardware Inside Homeland Security Computers — Then Putting Them Back on the Government Network

A Customs and Border Protection supervisor assigned to the Maine-Canada border has been arrested and charged after FBI agents say he was caught on hidden camera tearing apart government computers, ripping out processors and memory, stuffing in cheaper parts, and plugging the machines back into CBP’s network.

Terry “Jiajia” Liu, 39, of Calais, Maine, described himself as a native of Guangzhou, China. He worked as a CBP supervisor at the Calais Port of Entry, with duties stretching to the Ferry Point and Milltown crossings.

CBP officers are required to be U.S. citizens. According to The Maine Wire, Liu has posted images suggesting he voted in 2020. That does not answer the question every American should be asking: how did a man from Guangzhou end up with after-hours access to Homeland Security computers on the northern border?

According to an FBI affidavit obtained by Steve Robinson at The Maine Wire, CBP IT staff discovered in late 2025 that computers at three Maine border facilities had been modified without authorization. The count grew to 46 machines: 38 in Calais, six at Ferry Point, two at Milltown.

Thirty-nine had their CPUs swapped. Six had RAM changed. Eight had hard drives replaced.

The original hardware included 14th-generation Intel Core i7 processors. What went back in were older, weaker chips, including Pentium-class parts that did not meet CBP specs. Many of those computers were then reconnected to the agency network.

Port Director Theodore Cummings had already told Liu in writing in March 2025: “Please do not move any computers or computer parts.” Stay in your lane. File a ticket. Liu allegedly kept going.

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A Secretive DHS ‘Predictive Policing’ Unit is Analyzing Americans’ Financial Habits and Pulling Them Over

Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching, 404 Media has found.

The units, the name of which 404 Media is revealing here for the first time, are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT). In one case, a PITT analyzed the financial activity of a man who was driving across Montana, and local authorities stopped him under the pretense of an obstructed license plate and charged him with a DUI.

404 Media identified one PITT in the Spokane Sector, Washington, which polices the U.S. border with Canada, and another in the Laredo Sector, Texas, which polices the border with Mexico. The findings add to an Associated Press investigation from last year which found Border Patrol was using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) as part of the same wide-spanning predictive policing program.

“The bottom line is genuine probable cause cannot be synthetically generated,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center For Democracy & Technology, told 404 Media in an email. Here Border Patrol seems to be “using parallel construction to cloak the reason behind its car stops in secrecy. If we can’t meaningfully review and evaluate these systems, we can’t trust them,” he added.

Predictive policing is a highly controversial practice that police departments and federal agencies are increasingly turning to. The practice is designed to find people who may have committed crimes, but at the moment, no evidence of them doing so exists. Broadly, law enforcement may analyze data — such as a person’s movements, where they are at a certain time, or the roads they drive — then create or find another pretense to pull them over.

At around 9:30pm one night in May, Kyle William Olson was driving his black Chevy SUV on Interstate 90, with his dog Ducky in the backseat, according to police reports and an interview Olson gave to 404 Media. In Olson’s vehicle were marijuana edibles, marijuana cuttings, and butane hash oil. He works on a licensed cannabis farm in California, where he had picked up the weed, and was transporting it home to Wisconsin, he told 404 Media.

Olson drove past Sergeant James Beck of the Montana Highway Patrol who was sitting in his police car along with a colleague. When Olson passed, Beck noticed the vehicle’s license plate was obstructed by what he described as a tinted cover and the luggage holder, according to a police report. Beck pulled out, caught up to Olson, and pulled him over.

“Nothing major,” Beck said once he approached the passenger side window and exchanged pleasantries with Olson, according to bodycam footage. Beck said Olson’s license plate was “a little bit obstructed.”

“Just so you know, that’s our reason for stopping you,” Beck said. In the end, the officers demanded Olson step out of the vehicle, they tested his blood and charged him with a DUI. Authorities later charged Olson with possession with intent to distribute because of the marijuana in his vehicle, Olson told 404 Media.

But that wasn’t the real reason for stopping Olson.

During discovery in his case, Olson was provided a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document that explained how Border Patrol instigated his traffic stop. Written by Border Patrol Agent Matthew Phelps, the document said Phelps was assigned to the “Spokane Sector Border Patrol Targeting & Intelligence Division (TID) — Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team (PITT).” Olson shared the document with 404 Media.

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Chinese Student Charged With Lying To Border Agents Over Alleged Airport Photo Assignments From Beijing

A Chinese national studying at a Canadian university has been charged with lying to American officials to conceal that he took photographs at a Chicago airport cargo facility at the direction of a suspected Chinese official, according to a federal complaint filed in Detroit on Aug. 26.

Zeng Weiheng, born in 2004, is charged with making false statements in a matter under federal jurisdiction. An undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, Zeng was issued a B1/B2 visitor visa in October 2022 and has entered the United States 24 times since then, according to an affidavit filed with the complaint by an FBI agent.

He was arrested on Aug. 26.

Authorities stopped Zeng for an initial screening on Aug. 23 at the Ambassador Bridge border crossing in Detroit, after linking his vehicle to a security incident at a FedEx cargo facility at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on April 21.

That day, FedEx employees saw an Asian male spending roughly 20 minutes at the facility. Surveillance footage showed the man climbing onto a construction forklift to take photographs and attempting to open a parked delivery truck and shipping trailer before driving off in a minivan bearing an Ontario license plate.

Zeng underwent three interviews with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials during secondary screening, during which his account of his April trip changed. according to court documents.

In his first interview, Zeng claimed that he had visited tourist sites during his April trip, and the photos of planes in his phone were “pictures of model aircraft being tracked for a flight radar website,” authorities said. When pressed in a second interview, Zeng allegedly admitted going to the FedEx facility to take photos of planes and revealed that he had also trespassed at a FedEx facility at Toronto Pierson Airport in 2025.

By the third interview, Zeng revealed that a contact in China had “assigned him specific planes and their tail numbers to photograph” and he was paid $20 to $30 per photograph, the court documents allege.

In his subsequent interview with the FBI, Zeng admitted that the aircraft photography was a cover story devised by his handler, and the “true task was to obtain interior photographs of the FedEx facility,” according to the affidavit.

His Chinese contact “was primarily interested in information on transportation and logistics in the United States” and “asked for information of flight freight logistics, bus routes, and trains routes and schedules,” the affidavit said.

Zeng also told the FBI that he suspected his Chinese contact was a Chinese regime official working for one of China’s security departments, in part because the contact had provided him with “videos of scenes that only security officials would have access to.”

For his communication with the Chinese contact, Zeng said he was mailed SIM cards from China’s state-run China Telecom, which allowed him to “by-pass Canadian cellular network and connect directly with the Chinese provider network” to send text messages, according to the affidavit.

Zeng was instructed to use the SIM cards only in a Huawei-made phone, swapping in a new card every few months and destroying the old one. He was also told never to bring the phone with him on trips to the United States.

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Limits On Border Patrol Arrests In California Lifted By Federal Appeals Court

A federal appeals court on Aug. 24 rescinded a preliminary injunction that limited U.S. Border Patrol stops and arrests in California’s Central Valley.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that a federal district court failed to properly analyze whether the plaintiffs had standing to seek forward-looking relief based on alleged harms in the past.

Standing refers to the right of someone to sue in court. The parties must show, among other things, a strong enough connection to the dispute to justify their participation in a lawsuit.

The Ninth Circuit sent the lawsuit challenging immigration detentions back to the district court to allow it to revisit its legal analysis after that court issued a preliminary injunction limiting U.S. Border Patrol’s ability to stop and arrest people.

The new ruling, which does not dismiss the lawsuit itself, is a tactical win for the Trump administration because it eliminates – for now – a preliminary injunction that limited Border Patrol’s ability to stop and detain people. The appeals court sent the case back to the federal district court for a limited do-over on the question of standing.

The lawsuit concerns Section 1357(a)(2) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows Border Patrol agents to make warrantless arrests only if they have reason to believe two things: that the person is in the country unlawfully, and that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. The plaintiffs in the case took the position that the agents made arrests without properly assessing whether people were actually flight risks.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued on behalf of the plaintiffs, the United Farm Workers of America and several farm workers, arguing that over a three-day period in Kern County, California, in January 2025, Border Patrol unlawfully detained individuals – including day laborers – without having a reason to believe they were likely to escape before a warrant could be issued. The enforcement project was known as Operation Return to Sender.

Residents of Bakersfield and the vicinity “started disappearing” in “the middle of citrus harvesting season,” and this alarmed local residents who contacted the ACLU, the group said in a summary.

In a federal class action, the ACLU argued the Border Patrol was using “a cruel tactic to strip people of their right to an immigration hearing and coerce them instead into agreeing to “voluntary departure,” which carries with it a ban on returning to the United States for up to 10 years.

In April 2025, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston granted a preliminary injunction covering the Eastern District, which is California’s Central Valley.

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The Biden-Era C.B.P. Fabricated a Document Used to Imprison a Top-Level Brazilian Official. A U.S. Federal Judge Just Ordered Full Disclosure.

In a case with serious repercussions for U.S. national security and for Brazil, a Clinton-appointed U.S. federal judge concluded that an immigration record entered in the Customs and Border Protection system during the Biden administration was fraudulent. The fraudulent record reflected a non-existent entry into the U.S. by the national security advisor to former President Jair Bolsonaro. The fabricated entry was then somehow obtained and used by a controversial Brazilian Supreme Court judge to imprison that national security official.

Beyond concluding that the C.B.P. document was fake, the federal judge, Gregory A. Presnell of the Middle District of Florida, berated U.S. government lawyers for their refusal to produce all documents in the government’s possession concerning who was responsible for this fraudulent record and how it ended up being used in Brazil to imprison one of Bolsonaro’s closest advisors. I obtained a copy of the transcript from that U.S. judicial hearing and first reported the developments in Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper, on Friday.

The judge’s orders were issued as part of a lawsuit brought in U.S. federal court late last year by Filipe Martins, the top Bolsonaro advisor on international relations who was preventively imprisoned for six months in 2024 based on this false C.B.P. immigration entry. At the time, Martins was awaiting trial on charges that he had participated with Bolsonaro in plotting a coup after Lula’s narrow victory over Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential election.

The judge overseeing the cases involving the alleged coup is Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has become a political lightning rod not just in his own country but also around the world. He has overseen a censorship scheme so severe that even The New York Times cited internet freedom experts calling it “a potentially dangerous, authoritarian expansion of power.” On other occasions, the Times — obviously hostile to Bolsonaro — raised serious questions about whether Moraes has become a grave threat to Brazilian democracy in the name of saving it.

This is the same judge who ordered both Rumble and Twitter be blocked across Brazil for refusing to comply with all of his censorship orders. When he was unable to collect a massive fine he had imposed on Twitter due to its lack of bank accounts in the country, he simply ordered the funds removed from Starlink’s accounts, a completely different Musk-linked company. Last year, the Trump administration imposed personal financial sanctions on Moraes, alleging that Moraes carried out tyrannical attacks on the free speech rights of U.S. companies and has corrupted Brazilian justice for nakedly partisan ends. The Trump administration appears poised to impose sanctions on him once again.

Moraes has repeatedly demonstrated a particular obsession with punishing Martins, who was appointed by Bolsonaro to be his national security advisor at the age of 31. Brazilian law is similar to American law when it comes to a defendant’s rights regarding pre-trial imprisonment: defendants are typically allowed to remain free prior to trial, absent very narrow circumstances (such as proof of witness tampering or a plan to flee the country). Moraes somehow obtained the false C.B.P. entry showing Martins left Brazil for the U.S. and never returned, and then used that false evidence to order his preemptive imprisonment before trial by claiming it proved Martins sought to flee justice. Moraes had Martins placed in a particularly harsh prison, clearly hoping to induce “confessions” that would implicate Bolsonaro and other political enemies of the judge.

One of the many questions that have never been answered — beyond the key question of who fabricated this document — is how this false C.B.P. entry fell into the hands of Brazilians attempting to imprison Martins. The first time this false C.B.P. record emerged publicly was when a Brazilian reporter known to be very close to Moraes, Guilherme Amado, published a news report full of falsehoods, clearly designed to implicate Martins, starting with the highly accusatory (and false) headline: “Under investigation, former Bolsonaro aide went to Orlando in 2022 and evaporated.”

Just two weeks later, the same reporter announced that Moraes himself had begun using this allegation, speaking off the record to various journalists and politicians to tell them that Martins had gone to the U.S. and “disappeared,” clearly laying the groundwork to order his arrest. Weeks later, Moraes did exactly that, issuing an order that relied upon a police report featuring the fraudulent C.B.P. record to claim that Martins had gone to the U.S. and never returned to Brazil (i.e., “evaporating”).

Not only is it now indisputable that the document on which this story was based was fraudulent, as even the C.B.P. admits, but it was so obviously fraudulent from the start. Indeed, within two days of investigating the case back in 2024, I had obtained so much definitive proof that Martins had never left Brazil that not even my meticulous editors at Folha de S.Paulo attempted in any way to dilute the strong language of my reporting — published shortly after Moraes’ original order of imprisonment — stating that Martins had been imprisoned based on clear fraud.

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