A quote from the official statement from the Customs and Border Patrol. It was also in the article.
"CBP told our colleagues at NBC News that the names in the database are all people who were present during violence that broke out at the border in November. The agency also said journalists are being tracked so that the agency can learn more about what started that violence."
This doesn't make much sense. They would just interview the journalists after the event, and maybe do some follow-up interviews with a few. They wouldn't tag their passports for increased screenings, interrogate them at every border crossing, etc. They're treating the journalists like they helped organize the violence.
To me it just seems like a way to harass and disrupt journalists trying to closely cover the story.
If guilt by association could be attributed to on-duty journalists, practically all journalists would be in jail.
Messing with the press will always be construed as intimidation. Means to an end. And rightfully so. So as the government; just don't do it. Don't even think about it. The press doing their job is the turning point in the feedback loop that makes democracy work.
The first amendment protects the press, as well as the people's right "...to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
The whole "keep tabs on journalists to learn more about the violence that journalists didn't contribute too" is a strawman argument, and a fairly obvious boot-licking one at that.
That quote doesn't mean that the journalists have been convicted of crimes. It means they have dossiers/database tracking on them just for being there, reporting the violence, etc. Doing their jobs as reporters. If the agency wanted to find out what started the incidents in question, the agents should swiftly identify that journalists couldn't be the cause and dismiss them instead of keeping a database of them.
since when do we as a country track people over violence instead of say just oh doing an investigation of just asking wha5t happened? are we suddenly Communist China or Nazi Germany?
Suddenly? No. This is the inevitable result of the normalization of authoritarianism, militarism and mass surveillance that began after 9/11.
I mean, we have a President who outright calls the press enemies of the people, and half the country agrees with him, and most of the rest just dismiss it as Trump being an angry crazy man. That's how far the Overton window has been pushed towards protofascism in the US.
"CBP told our colleagues at NBC News that the names in the database are all people who were present during violence that broke out at the border in November. The agency also said journalists are being tracked so that the agency can learn more about what started that violence."