SPOKANE, Wash. — Two men who were detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in separate incidents at a Spokane bus station will receive $35,000 each in settlements, according to a press release from the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington (ACLU) on Thursday.
Andres Sosa Segura and Mohanad Elshieky both filed federal lawsuits after their detentions at the Spokane Intermodal Center in 2017 and 2019. They were represented in a lawsuit by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, the ACLU and the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.
In Sosa's case, he was traveling home to his wife in children in Washington from Montana in 2017 when Border Patrol agents stopped him as he tried to transfer buses, according to the ACLU. The agents demanded Sosa's "papers," and then escalated the issue when Sosa presented them with a “Know Your Rights” card and invoked his right to an attorney, the press release.
According to the ACLU, agents arrested Sosa despite his attempt to invoke his rights and after a records check showed he was already in pending immigration proceedings. The agents then drove him to a facility 90 minutes away for further interrogation, holding him for several hours before finally releasing him. The incident caused Sosa to miss his bus home and his wife had to drive several hours to pick him up, the press release said.
“The hours I spent detained for no reason were terrifying and all I wanted was to be with my family,” Sosa said. “I hope nobody ever has to go through something like this again. I hope that this case sends a message that CBP agents need to respect the rights of people like me.”
In a separate incident on Jan. 27, 2019, Elshieky, a comedian from Portland, Oregon, was returning home from a performance in Pullman when Border Patrol agents ordered him to get off the bus at the Spokane Intermodal Center. A tweet from Elshieky about the incident went viral, garnering more than 100,000 likes and tens of thousands of retweets.
Elshieky had been granted asylum in the United States in 2018. He said he was interrogated for 20 minutes by agents who contended his papers were fake and that he was in the country illegally.
The complaint filed in April 2019 said Elshieky was detained by Border Patrol officers after producing valid identification documents demonstrating that he was lawfully present in the country. The lawsuit claimed that Border Patrol officers unlawfully detained and arrested Elshieky, as they had "no legal basis to force him off the bus for interrogation."
When Elshieky provided a valid employment authorization document issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the officers said that "illegals fake these [documents] all the time and use them," the lawsuit said.
According to the lawsuit, Elshieky tried again to explain his status to the officer, who allegedly dismissed his explanations and claimed that they have "heard this all before" and that "illegals say that all the time."
The lawsuit claims that agents also eventually decide they would "let him [Elshieky] go this time," even though Elshiekly was lawfully present in the United States and they had "no basis to seize him."
“To have the same government that is supposed to protect me accuse me of lying and being here illegally really shook me and undermined my hard-fought sense of safety,” Elshieky said in the ACLU press release. “I’ll never forget the harassment and humiliation by the officers when it was clear I belonged in the United States and on that bus. I hope my experience can at least be a wake-up call for others, and a lesson for CBP and its agents to treat everyone with dignity and respect, and to honor their rights.”
Elshieky also tweeted about the settlement on Thursday, writing in part, "It has been two years since I was unlawfully detained and interrogated by Border Patrol while taking the greyhound bus in Washington. I’m happy to say that the case is finally settled and done. Maybe next time they should refrain from harassing immigrants."
During the litigation, the United States produced an agency memorandum dated Jan. 28, 2020, that states Border Patrol agents must receive permission from the bus company or bus driver before boarding buses and cannot temporarily detain people at bus stations without reasonable suspicion.
KREM has reached out to a Border Patrol spokesperson for a statement regarding the settlements.
