Reporters in chains

[drfemoe]

Under Homeland Security orders, journalists from England, Sweden, Holland and other friendly countries are being detained at U.S. airports, strip-searched and deported.
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June 15, 2004 | The Department of Homeland Security has started enforcing an obscure provision in immigration law requiring foreign journalists to seek special visas before entering the United States, even though their nonreporting countrymen can enter without any visa at all. ...

The most recent incident occurred in early May when Elena Lappin, a British freelance journalist traveling to Los Angeles to work on a story for the Guardian of London, was detained, questioned, strip-searched, handcuffed and taken to a downtown holding facility for the night. Twenty-six hours after arriving, she was put back on a plane to England. Instead of writing the article she planned, she gave the Guardian 2,400 words on her Kafkaesque encounter.

Lappin's case is not isolated. In 2003, 12 journalists were detained at and deported from LAX. Last March, a Danish photographer had DNA samples taken before he was deported. That same month, a Swedish reporter was turned away at a Washington airport, where he was photographed and fingerprinted, and not allowed to call his embassy. Last May, six French reporters in two groups were detained at LAX; they were on assignment to cover a video-game trade fair. All were deported, the first three "after being repeatedly questioned and body-searched six times," according to Reporters Without Borders. Similar fates awaited a Swedish freelancer in May, a pair of Dutch reporters that same month trying to cover an awards ceremony for world film stunt champions, a British reporter in October and an Austrian in December. In many of the cases, the reporters were treated like criminals: handcuffed and taken to prison holding facilities where some were not allowed to sleep.
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/15/foreign_reporters/