This is what many Americans and visitors face at the border, where border patrol and ICE have extensive powers not fully limited by Fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
This too is not unusual, ICE and border patrol have been targeting journalists for special attention for several years.
What Shaun experienced is what visitors and returning residents, citizens can increasingly expect at the border as Trump turns ICE into an agency focused on harassing activists whom Trump considers political opponents.
Following President Trump’s calls for “extreme vetting” of immigrants from seven Muslim majority countries, then–Department of Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly hinted that he wanted full access to visa applicants’ social-media profiles. “We may want to get on their social media, with passwords. It’s very hard to truly vet these people in these countries, the seven countries,” Kelly said to the House’s Homeland Security Committee, adding, “If they don’t cooperate, they can go back.”
Such a proposal, if implemented, would expand the department’s secretive social media–monitoring capacities. And as the Department of Homeland Security moves toward grabbing more social-media data from foreigners, such information may be increasingly interpreted and emotionally characterized by sophisticated data-mining programs. What should be constitutionally protected speech could now hinder the mobility of travelers because of a secretive regime that subjects a person’s online words to experimental “emotion analysis.” According to audio leaked to The Nation, the Department of Homeland Security is currently building up data sets with social media–profile information that are searchable by “tone.” — www.thenation.com/...
— @subirgrewal