Homeland Security sued for not divulging info SAN FRANCISCO

searches_078_df.jpg Shirin Sinnar, left, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus is representing Nabila Mango who has been harrassed at the airport. Civil Rights groups sue U.S. Department of Homeland Security for intrusive questioning and searches for U.S. travelers. Photographed in San Francisco on 2/7/08. Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle Mandatory credit for photographer and San Francisco Chronicle. No Sales/Magazines out. less searches_078_df.jpg Shirin Sinnar, left, an attorney with the Asian Law Caucus is representing Nabila Mango who has been harrassed at the airport. Civil Rights groups sue U.S. Department of Homeland Security ... more Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Homeland Security sued for not divulging info 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Nabila Mango, a therapist who works in San Francisco, flew home in December after a trip to the Middle East and says customs agents detained her and asked her to identify everyone she had met and all the places she'd slept.

Amir Khan, a tech consultant from Fremont, says he's questioned for hours each time he returns from abroad and has been asked whether he hates the U.S. government.

After receiving more than 20 such complaints in the past year, mostly from South Asians and Muslims, two legal organizations sued the Homeland Security Department on Thursday for information on its policies of questioning and searching returning travelers.

"When the government searches your books, peers into your computer and demands to know your political views, it sends the message that free expression and privacy disappear at our nation's doorstep," attorney Shirin Sinnar of the Asian Law Caucus said at a news conference after filing the suit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

The Asian Law Caucus and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said they asked Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection division for its policies Oct. 31 and have yet to receive any documents, despite a 20-day deadline for a response from the government under the Freedom of Information Act.

The groups want to know what policies guide customs agents in asking political or religious questions, what happens when a traveler refuses to answer or wants a lawyer, and what standards exist for agents who want to search or copy material from laptop computers, cell phones and other electronic devices.

Courts have allowed federal agents more leeway in searches at borders and airports than elsewhere, and some rulings have allowed customs agents to search laptops and cell phones without evidence the devices' owners have done anything wrong. Sinnar said she considers the searches of electronic devices legally questionable, and that singling out travelers by race or religion would raise serious constitutional concerns.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner declined to comment on the lawsuit but said laptops can be seized and searched "when they contain information in violation of U.S. criminal law" - for example, if they are being used in terrorism, drug smuggling or child pornography. She would not discuss agents' inquiries into travelers' politics or religion.

Mango, 64, a therapist at the Tenderloin Health Clinic in San Francisco, is a Palestinian-born U.S. citizen who has lived in the United States since 1965. She said she was the only Arab-looking passenger on her Dec. 27 flight from Frankfurt, Germany, and the only one detained by customs agents at San Francisco International Airport.

During the 60 to 90 minutes she was held, the agents demanded details of people she had encountered and places she had gone in her three-week trip, the names and addresses of relatives in Jordan and information about her U.S.-born adult daughter, Mango said. They leafed through Arab-language books in her luggage, lost interest when they discovered the books were about music theory, and erased cell-phone messages from her daughter, who was waiting outside the airport, she said.

"I was really traumatized," Mango said. "I was worried about the safety of my daughter, my family, my friends."

Khan, 32, a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, said he's been detained five times at U.S. airports since 2003 and questioned for a total of 20 hours. Agents have asked him what he thinks of the government, whether he attends mosques and why he has certain sums in his bank account, have examined his credit cards in private, and once ordered him to log onto his computer and make his files accessible, he said.

"I was told I have no rights," he said. Once, before he became a citizen, he said, "an officer told me that if I didn't answer all his questions, he would take my green card."

Another incident involved a Tunisian actor who was invited to the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco. Lotfi Abdelli, star of an anti-terrorism film called "Making Of," landed in San Francisco on Oct. 7 and was detained at the airport for five hours, the festival's Carol Bisharat-Sani said. She said he reported that agents confiscated his cell phone and questioned him at length about Islam and terrorism.

By the time Abdelli arrived at the festival, Bisharat-Sani said, he was ready to return home.

"He had some lofty ideas, maybe from movies, about what the United States was like," she said. "But he was greeted and treated like a terrorist."