While returning from an aid flight to Cuba, American phones were confiscated at the American airport

Members of the convoy that Delivery of humanitarian aid to Cuba They were detained and interrogated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) upon their return to the United States on a charter plane from Havana. Of the 20 U.S. citizens pulled over for secondary inspection at Miami International Airport on Wednesday morning, CBP confiscated 18 of them’s phones and other devices, with little information provided about if and when they will get them back.

The group was part of a larger coalition of activists who He traveled in waves to Cuba As part of the Caravan Nostra América, named after a 19th-century essay by Cuban thinker José Martí criticizing U.S. dominance of the Americas. The caravan included 650 delegates from 33 countries An estimated 20 tons of aid were delivered To the island state. Some members of the caravan traveled to Cuba by sea on a 75-foot fishing boat that set off from Mexico carrying rice, beans, canned food, baby formula, bicycles and solar panels for distribution to Cuban organizations on the ground. Others chartered flights, many of which left and returned from Miami. One delegation, led by activist group CODEPINK, said it was carrying 6,300 pounds of medicine and other medical supplies worth $433,000. The 20 people arrested on Monday traveled together as part of the CODEPINK delegation.

The aim of these supplies was to mitigate the effects of the ongoing US blockade on oil exports to Cuba. The Trump administration has been blocking Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba since the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, though. Reuters Reports The State Department allowed a limited number of fuel exports to Cuba’s private sector. The shortage has thrown the already struggling country into crisis: the island has been plagued by rolling power outages. Food rots in refrigerators, garbage piles up in the streets because there is not enough fuel to collect it, and Cubans are forced to Living in the dark While some companies operate on oil provided by the United States. Cuba’s universal healthcare system has been particularly hard hit: New York Times Reports Hospital patients are dying due to lack of resources, and doctors tell the newspaper that these deaths could have been prevented had it not been for the lack of fuel.

The convoy included a number of prominent activists, including leftist broadcaster Hassan Baker and… Chris Smallsan Amazon worker who helped organize a walkout at a New York City facility in 2020. Smalls was among those who had their devices confiscated.

“There was a charter flight that went off yesterday, and it went very smoothly,” said Olivia DiNucci, an organizer with the left-leaning pacifist group CODEPINK. Edge Wednesday. DiNucci was one of 20 members of the convoy pulled aside for a secondary inspection. “There were a couple of people who were arrested, but it happened very quickly, and – in quotes – ‘normal’ racial profiling happened. But right when we got off the plane, 20 of us were detained.”

DiNucci said her name was called before she headed to the customs office. All twenty people were pulled to secondary inspection and then interrogated individually. Some of the questions were standard: DiNucci said she was asked what she was doing in Cuba, how long she had been there, where she was living, who she was with, what she did for work, where she lived, and her phone number. But some members of the group who have relatives in Venezuela, Mexico and Cuba were asked about their families, according to DiNucci.

“They asked other people about their families in Cuba, about the work they did in Venezuela,” DiNucci said. “Cubans want Marco Rubio in power,” one agent said, and he was “critical of the fact that we gave the aid the government was about to get.”

CBP did not respond EdgeRequest for comment.

Customs officials gave the group two options: either unlock their phones and hand them over for inspection, or confiscate their devices, DiNucci said. DiNucci said she and another person voluntarily surrendered their phones. The other 18 people had their devices confiscated. Agents also examined people’s notebooks and diaries and photographed their contents. DiNucci’s phone was on airplane mode, and she believes agents examined her photos. “All my messaging apps, all my emails, everything was deleted” before going through customs, she said. At one point, the phone was put out of her sight; She doesn’t know what the agents did to her next.

Susan Adly, President of the National Lawyers Syndicate, said: Edge These types of phone searches are not new, and are often used against activists. The union is providing caravan members with information about their rights and working to help recover their phones.

Adly said: “We know that the United States, above all, is doing this for the purpose of intimidation, but I am confident that these activists will not be intimidated and will continue to stand in solidarity with Cuba as they endure this inhumane American blockade.” He added: “We intend to put pressure on the government to return their phones immediately, and there is a way to demand compensation for the impact of what we consider to be an unlawful search and seizure.”

A Cuban-American member of the caravan, who requested that her name be withheld for professional reasons, said she traveled with a regular phone. “I felt anxious about it,” she said. “You hear things about inspection, so I didn’t want to risk that.”

She traveled through Miami and returned to the United States last week without incident. She suspects she made it easily because she has Global Entry, a trusted traveler program run by Customs and Border Protection. She added that other members of her group were pulled aside, and their devices were searched.

She said she grew up in a Cuban-American family and was often warned about repression in Cuba. “I’ve always been warned that Cuba is a high-stakes surveillance state, but I can’t think of a country bigger than the United States,” she said.

The Trump administration has threatened to impose tariffs on any country that ships fuel to Cuba. Earlier this week, a Russian tanker arrived carrying an estimated 730,000 barrels of crude oil Travel across the English ChannelAccompanied by a Russian warship. At an international conference in February, several Caribbean countries He pledged to send humanitarian aid to Cuba He called for calming tensions between the United States and the island state.

The Cuban-American member of the caravan he spoke to Edge She said that her goal is to help civilians who are suffering as a result of the siege. “I think people ultimately went because they wanted to help people,” she said. “And I think ultimately, that was the mission.”

Unlawful searches of people’s phones typically violate the Fourth Amendment, with one glaring exception: Inspections conducted at ports of entryIncluding airports. The Supreme Court in 2014 held that such searches are “reasonable simply because they occur at the border.”

CBP conducts two types of device searches: “basic” searches like the one with DiNucci, where agents can examine anything on a person’s phone that is available offline, and more advanced forensic checks. Warrant-free criminal searches are allowed at some ports of entry, and prohibited at others, thanks to a host of federal rulings with varying outcomes.

Travelers can refuse to have their devices searched, but for people who are not US citizens, this could mean being denied entry into the country. Citizens who refuse to be searched may have their devices confiscated, which is what happened to 18 members of the caravan who traveled through Miami on Wednesday.

CODEPINK founder Medea Benjamin, a member of the caravan that returned to the United States via Miami on March 23, said she and most others in her group got in without incident. “I was just asked a few questions and that was it, which was the case for most people,” she said. Five people from her group were pulled aside for a secondary examination, but were only detained for half an hour.

But Benjamin said she found it difficult to spread the news about how bad conditions were in Cuba.

Benjamin said authorities in Miami hindered her group’s ability to hold a press conference before the trip. Officials rejected their statement. She said US policy toward Cuba seemed to follow the logic that “in order to liberate the Cuban people, we must cause enough pain for them to rise up.” “It is an ideological policy that does not talk about the people and the real needs of the people.”