A Pastor’s Legal Fight Against CBP Exposes a Reckless Surveillance Operation

Ryan Devereaux, The Intercept, Mar. 6, 2022

"A quiet drama unfolding at the intersection of faith, surveillance, and borders, Kaji Dousa’s experience that night in San Diego began a legal fight that continues to this day. As she would later learn, the pastor was one of at least 51 U.S. citizens who were targeted and tracked by their own government for their proximity to asylum-seekers in late 2018 and early 2019. Dousa is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit alleging that the border dragnet violated her constitutional rights as a faith leader ministering to migrants by placing her on a secret blacklist, revoking her expedited border-crossing privileges, and calling on Mexican law enforcement to detain her. Through her litigation, filed in the Southern District of California, the pastor and her lawyers have unearthed substantial evidence of reckless intelligence sharing between authorities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico divide. More than 1,000 pages of recently unsealed testimony from U.S. officials deposed in the case and internal CBP communications shared with The Intercept provide an inside look at “Operation Secure Line”: a secretive, politicized, international law enforcement effort carried out during the peak of Trump-era caravan mania. The materials reveal an effort that was chaotic, unfocused, and dangerous for the people caught in its crosshairs. The testimony and communications add names, dates, and context to a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s investigation that was published in September. While the DHS watchdog found significant flaws in the implementation of Operation Secure Line, evidence in Dousa’s case suggests that the problems went deeper than the report indicated. Her case points to potential gaps in the office’s investigation, and Dousa’s legal team alleges that a senior CBP official at the center of the operation at best misled and at worst lied when he told the court that the pastor’s travel privileges were not affected by the surveillance program. The court cited his testimony as reason not to reinstate Dousa’s travel privileges — an issue that is the subject of ongoing litigation."