A green card holder detained on return to the United States and denied access to medications. The handcuffing and body search of an American citizen after she questioned the detention of her German travel partner. The detention for five days of an immigrant mother and her two children who became sick in custody.
Recent reports about Customs and Border Protection actions at ports of entry are the focus of a letter signed by more than 40 Democratic members of Congress questioning the agency’s practices and demanding information about complaints of agents’ misconduct, among other things.
The agency appears to be denying entry to noncitizens more often and subjecting travelers to “harsher questioning tactics, prolonged detention and arbitrary denials of entry,” the lawmakers said in a letter provided first to NBC News.
They said the CBP conduct appears to be a response to President Donald Trump’s directive to the Department of Homeland Security to step up vetting of noncitizens who want to come to the United States and of those already in the country.
The actions have turned ordinary international travel “into a nightmarish ordeal for tourists, business travelers, lawful permanent residents … and even U.S. citizens,” they said in the letter, which is addressed to the acting heads of CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The main authors are Sens. Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, and Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut; and Reps. Delia Ramirez, of Illinois, and Lou Correa, of California.
Warren said in a statement that “Americans deserve answers on the CBP’s troubling tactics.” Ramirez said the members “will use every tool at our disposal” to get answers to their questions about DHS agencies.
NBC has reached out to DHS, CBP and ICE.
The lawmakers raised concerns about CBP violating travelers’ due process rights, pointing to the deportation of a Brown University professor despite a judge’s order that she not be moved without advance notice.
The lawmakers questioned more frequent transfers of travelers to ICE custody “for prolonged detentions” and more frequent searches of travelers’ phones.
The tactics are having a collateral effect on the U.S. travel industry, they said, citing airlines’ preparations for reduced travel and canceled trips.
“CBP’s tactics, along with other Trump administration policies, appear to be contributing to a decline in travel to the United States,” the letter says.
The scrutiny of CBP follows several media reports, many cited in the letter, about the treatment of people in encounters with CBP or in its custody.
A Senate hearing on Rodney Scott’s nomination to lead CBP is scheduled for Wednesday.
