Wall Street Journal Reporter Detained at LAX, Asked To Turn Over Phones

LOS ANGELES, CA — A reporter from the Wall Street Journal was detained at Los Angeles International airport for questioning and was asked to surrender her phones.

She detailed the whole ordeal on a Facebook message posted Thursday morning.

Maria Abi-Habib, who was born in the U.S. but has dual U.S.-Lebanese citizenship and covers the Middle East for the WSJ, was in town to attend a wedding.

When she landed at LAX last Thursday, July 14, a Homeland Security officer recognized her and escorted her to a special screening area after helping her clear customs, Abi-Habib wrote on her Facebook page.

"Another customs agent joined her at that point and they grilled me for an hour - asking me about the years I lived in the US, when I moved to Beirut and why, who lives at my in-laws' house in LA and numbers for the groom and bride whose wedding I was attending," she wrote.

Abi-Habib said she answered "jovially" because she knew from experience on high-level security clearance that "being annoyed or hostile will work against you."

But when the DHS officer asked for her cell phones, that was when she pushed back.

"'We want to collect information,' she said, refusing to specify what kind. And that is where I drew the line — I told her I had First Amendment rights as a journalist she couldn't violate and I was protected under. I explained I had to protect my sources of information," Abi-Habib wrote.

When the agent refused to budge, Abi-Habib told her to contact the lawyers at the Wall Street Journal because the phones were company property.

Abi-Habib was allowed to go after the female officer talked to her supervisor. The reason the Department of Homeland Security wanted the phones was not made clear to her.

"I have no idea why they wanted my phones," she wrote. "It could have been a way for them to download my contacts. Or maybe they expect me of terrorism or sympathizing with terrorists."

The DHS acknowledged to CNN it detained Abi-Habib for questioning but did not say why. Homeland Security and Customs of Border Patrol have the rights to search anyone at any ports of entry without "reasonable suspicion" of any crimes.

And Homeland Security has the legal authority to confiscate any electronic devices within 100 miles of any ports of entry. This policy was set in 2013.

"Imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits," the department wrote.

WSJ Editor-in-Chief Gerard Baker said the paper was "disturbed" by this incident.

"We have been working to learn more about these events, but the notion that Customs and Border Protection agents would stop and question one of our journalists in connection with her reporting and seek to search her cell phones is unacceptable," Baker said in a statement to CNNMoney.