DHS used obscure tariff law to secretly seize journalist Georgia Fort’s phone records

Nearly a decade after federal agents failed to unmask an anonymous Trump critic on Twitter, the Department of Homeland Security secretly used the same obscure provision from the Tariff Act of 1930 to compel T-Mobile to turn over six months of private phone records belonging to Georgia Fort.

Fort, along with Don Lemon and several other journalists, was covering the Jan. 18 protest at Cities Church, where 39 people were eventually charged under the FACE Act in connection with the demonstration, which was sparked by pastor David Easterwood’s dual role as ICE’s acting field office director in St. Paul.

Under Section 1509 of the Tariff Act of 1930, Homeland Security Investigations obtained Fort’s phone records without securing a judge-approved search warrant, and without notifying her. The action followed a legal setback on Feb. 25 when U.S. Magistrate Judge John Docherty rejected the government’s application for a YouTube warrant. When prosecutors renewed their application on March 6, the magistrate ordered more briefing. The government withdrew its warrant requests entirely by March 26.

But the government did not abandon its pursuit. Instead, it pivoted to administrative subpoenas.

Fort was no stranger to federal scrutiny. Seven months before the Cities Church protest, she interviewed activist Isabella Lopez about a federal raid at Las Cuatro Milpas in Minneapolis. Lopez was immediately arrested after she left Fort’s downtown office in St. Paul.

“To have this happen to someone I just interviewed at my office also felt like a direct signal to me,” Fort said. “It just all felt very targeted. They could have arrested this young woman anywhere.”

On April 3, HSI agent Grayson Cooper issued a Section 1509 subpoena to Google. One week later, on April 7, Google rejected the demand, informing HSI that using customs subpoenas without any basis for a customs investigation would violate the Stored Communications Act.

“For this specific admin subpoena, we pushed back and did not end up producing on it,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

Despite this rejection, HSI continued issuing customs summonses. On April 12, agent Cooper sent summonses to T-Mobile. T-Mobile turned over records it had on Fort, the Council on American-Islamic Relations Minnesota (CAIR-MN), Nekima Levy-Armstrong, AntiWarMN activist Jessica Sunin and St. Paul School Board Member Chauntyll Allen.

HSI continued issuing at least 24 additional customs subpoenas to GoFundMe and Facebook after Google’s rejection.

Then on May 28, T-Mobile officially verified Fort’s phone records, making them admissible in court. That same day, DOJ prosecutor Ned Hedley ordered HSI Agent Timothy Gerber to withdraw any outstanding subpoenas from YouTube, Facebook and GoFundMe. The reason for Hedley’s sudden decision remains unclear.

Section 1509 was designed for trade enforcement, such as forcing commercial importers to hand over business logs when suspected of dodging tariffs. However, federal agencies have a documented history of stretching the law. In 2017, Customs and Border Protection pulled a Section 1509 subpoena targeting the anonymous account @ALT_USCIS only after Twitter filed a federal lawsuit. A subsequent DHS Inspector General report scolded the agency for routinely using the customs tool to investigate completely unrelated matters, including drug stings and even internal employee sick leave.

This has alarmed civil liberties advocates like Hannah James, counsel in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

“Administrative subpoenas are a tool that can be issued by the government official without getting any prior sign-off from a judge,” James said. “When you don’t have those additional safeguards, it makes them ripe for abuse and misuse.”

To close these exact legal loopholes, press media watchdogs are pushing for a pair of legislative reforms. The PRESS Act would explicitly block federal agencies from utilizing administrative or third-party subpoenas to secretly seize a reporter’s digital records or unmask anonymous sources. Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Becca Balint introduced the Privacy Protection Updates Act, which aims to modernize decades-old protections by creating strict consequences when law enforcement entities execute search warrants on journalists without prior notification.

Caitlin Vogus, senior adviser for advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the public is worse off without these protections because hidden sources will stay silent and critical news will never be told.

“These phone records can be incredibly revealing of journalists’ communications with their sources. When the government can get access to them so easily without a judge involved, without even notification to the journalist, it sends a really chilling message to potential sources and whistleblowers who might want to come forward and talk to the press,” Vogus said. “But if they know that their phone records could be connected to a journalist so easily, they’ll be much less likely to speak to the press, and that means a lot of really important information that the public needs to know will never be revealed and will never be reported. So it really hurts all of us, not just journalists, it hurts the entire public.”

Fort’s legal team filed a motion demanding that the court immediately impound or destroy the estimated 10,000 call and text logs in DHS custody. They argued federal agents carried out an illegal “end-run” around the court to seize her protected journalistic records without notice.

Clint Combs is a freelance reporter and contributing writer for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. He welcomes reader responses at combs0284@gmail.com.