Border agents shared confidential info about U.S. journalists, activists with Mexican authorities – By Jason Buch (Palabra) / Aug 17, 2022
Editor’s note: This story first appeared on palabra, the digital news site by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. For more reporting about the impact of governments spying on journalists in Latin America, please read here.
In late 2018, staffers and volunteers for the nonprofit organization Pueblo Sin Fronteras in Tijuana, Mexico experienced unusual — and disturbing — scrutiny from law enforcement on both sides of the United States–Mexico border.
As part of its broader mission to provide humanitarian assistance to immigrants, Pueblo Sin Fronteras has organized caravans of asylum-seekers traveling from Central American countries to the U.S. border. But when its activists and aid workers in Tijuana tried to enter the U.S. in 2018, they were taken to interrogation rooms and questioned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. They were asked about their work with the organization, and then about their families, education, and political leanings.
The hard questioning happened, activists say, after police in Tijuana and elsewhere in Mexico surveilled Pueblo Sin Fronteras members as they assisted thousands of people trying to enter the U.S. through the southern border. Earlier in 2018, a Pueblo Sin Fronteras organizer was arrested in southern Mexico while participating in a caravan. Another organizer received an explicit threat in November 2018 that he and others were being targeted for assassination.
The Pueblo Sin Fronteras organizers are not alone. In recent years, university researchers, lawyers, journalists, and activists from Texas to California who document or assist asylum seekers have also been harassed by U.S. and Mexican officials in response to record numbers of asylum seekers from Central America and other parts of Latin America.
