Leading civil rights groups have sued the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of a group of photojournalists who were tracked in a secret database and harassed by U.S. officials following their border coverage. One plaintiff said that when she saw her photo crossed out in the secret database, she realized there was nothing random about her interrogation by border agents. “I was being targeted by my own government for reporting on conditions at the border.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties, and national ACLU say that all five journalists in the lawsuit were harassed when attempting to return to the U.S. after going to Mexico to report on the so-called migrant caravan demonized by Donald Trump last year (an issue he curiously forgot about post-election day). Officers “interrogated the journalists about their coverage of the caravans of people traveling,” a statement from the groups said, “and asked them about their observations of conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border, including in shelters.”

What the five journalists didn’t know at the time was that they were also being surveilled in a secret government database tracking a number of journalists, as well as organizers and immigrant rights advocates, who covered or had associations with the so-called caravan. Documents revealed by the whistleblower showed the government tracking some of them as “suspected organizers,” “instigators,” and even noting the car model of one activist from immigrant rights advocacy group Al Otro Lado.

The groups suing the government said that “The database contained the photos and personal information of the journalists in our case, including their name, date of birth, the fact that an alert had been placed on them, and a notation of whether they had been subjected to interrogation. Three of the photos were crossed out with a bold X on them. A fourth, which wasn’t crossed out, stated: Pending Encounter.”

“Some of the journalists were forced to disclose the photographs they had taken in Mexico to border officers, and one officer captured some of these photos with a cell phone,” the groups continue, saying “The border officers’ targeting, detention, and questioning of the journalists was unconstitutional. The government violated the First Amendment by compelling each journalist to disclose confidential information about their observations as journalists and about their sources, including the identities of people with whom they may have interacted while working in Mexico.”