![]() border, including those in Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota. Jayapal, who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she has requested an immediate meeting with the director of the CBP’s Seattle field office, which oversees operations at 67 ports of entry along the northern U.S. “This document, if verified as coming from the Seattle CBP Field Office, matches exactly the process described by CBP leadership in a briefing last week, our own sources inside CBP, and the credible and powerful accounts from travelers who faced extreme profiling at the U.S.-Canada border,” the Democratic lawmaker said in a statement that linked to a local paper in Washington state that published the directive. Pramila Jayapal said Thursday that her office was working to confirm what appears to be a Customs and Border Protection directive to field officers asking for additional scrutiny of Iranians, Palestinians and Lebanese at the U.S. Reprinted with permission from The Northern Light.Washington Rep. Saunders said he had yet to be contacted by the office, nearly two weeks after he reported being an eyewitness to the detentions. A request for comment made to CRCL was unanswered at press time. Governor Jay Inslee and other politicians have criticized CBP on the matter, while the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) disclosed that it was opening an investigation into the incidents. National and international media have picked up the story, while The Seattle Times published an editorial on January 17 calling for answers from CBP. There has been significant backlash to the reports that people of Iranian heritage were subjected to harsh vetting. In 2018, Fasano was reported to receive a base salary of $187,000 which puts her in the top 10 percent of the highest paid CBP officials. Poitras won the 2015 Academy Award for best documentary feature for Citizenfour about Edward Snowden. While in New Jersey, her office was the subject of complaints by documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras for being repeatedly harassed when returning from overseas. ![]() ![]() While in San Diego, Fasano was named in a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security brought by former CBP officer Julia Davis, who claimed that Fasano had engaged in retribution after Davis had made a whistleblowing disclosure to the FBI. There are four field offices on the northern border. ![]() According to Saunders, CBP’s Seattle Field Office accounted for 309 and 91, respectively, of those numbers, about 50 percent of the total in 2019 versus 29 percent in 2018. ![]() In December, the CBC reported that ERs on the northern border had jumped 97 percent to 616 from October 2018 to September 2019, compared to 312 in the previous 12-month period. for a period of time, usually five years. ERs typically mean that individuals are banned from entering the U.S. The CBP officer also addressed the issue of expedited removals (ERs), saying assistant port director John Dahm was behind the recent increase in the number of ERs being imposed on Canadians crossing the border. According to the source, officers have been told not to talk to the press about the matter. saying the operation was suspended, the CBP officer said. Once the detentions became national news, Blaine port director Kenneth Williams put out a directive on Jan. Travelers were selected for counterterrorism inspections based solely upon their national origin, the officer said, adding that there were no immigration or customs reasons to detain them. ![]()
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