U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been ordered by a federal court to produce memos showing that its field office in Seattle purposely targeted people of Iranian, Lebanese, and Palestinian descent following a drone strike in January that killed Iran's top military leader, Politico reports.
Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's Quds forces, was killed in early January by a U.S. drone strike approved by President Donald Trump. Immediately afterward, Washington state ports of entry detained hundreds of travelers with Iranian ties, many of them American citizens, Politico reported at the time.
An internal memo leaked to the press in late January showed border officers being directed to Iranian and Lebanese nationals. One of the documents obtained by the Council on American Islamic Relations-Washington and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project through a lawsuit was an exact match to that memo, according to Politico.
A CBP spokesperson at the time called reports of the directive "false."
But acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan in February said there was no "national directive" to target travelers over their country of origin, adding that the actions of the Seattle office were "not in line with our direction, and so that was immediately corrected and was very unique to that one sector."
"The Court’s order makes clear that the government unlawfully sought to conceal illegal conduct, as the directive unlawfully targeted individuals based solely on their national origin," Matt Adams, NWIRP's legal director, said.
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