Progressive political streamer Hasan Piker was returning home from a trip to France over the weekend when he was stopped and detained by Customs and Border Protection at a Chicago airport. He was interrogated for two hours.
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Piker later took to social media to post about the experience and later talked about it on stream.
The questions pertained to Hasan’s opinions on Hamas, Houthis, and Hezbollah members, and his criticisms of President Donald Trump.
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“They straight up tried to get something out of me that I think they could use to basically detain me permanently,” Piker said on stream following the incident. “… [the agent] kept saying stuff like, do you like Hamas? Do you support Hamas? Do you think Hamas is a terror group or a resistance group?”
“I kept repeating the same statement over and over again,” Piker said. “I kept saying… I’m on the side of civilians. I want the endless bloodshed to end. I am a pacifist. I want wars to end… which is insane because up until this moment. If you were to say as an American citizen, you stand 10 toes down with Hamas, or you stand 10 toes down with the Houthis, they can’t deny you entry into the country for that s***.”
Neither his phone nor his laptop was confiscated or accessed by agents.
This incident highlights a key issue with the Trump administration: many outspoken critics have compared Trump to a fascist dictator, and one of the things fascist regimes are known for doing is suppressing journalistic freedom through intimidation.
The questions ICE agents asked Piker seem intended to intimidate political commentators and journalists to keep their mouths shut about saying anything negative about the current regime under Trump, something Hasan states on his stream.
“The reason they’re doing [this] is to try to create an environment of fear, to try to get people like myself, or others who would be in my shoes that don’t have that same level of security, to shut the f**k up,”
“Nothing I have done online is illegal as of now,” Piker added. “Laws may change in the future, and they might actually start prosecuting speech, which I do fear is the goal of this administration. But so far, everything I’ve done is fully protected under the First Amendment. And none of the questions [I was asked by CPB] are actually valid questions to ask.”
“I think they [detained me] because they know who the f**k I am and they wanted to put the fear of god into me, not knowing that I’m a stubborn piece of s*** and that’s not going to work at all,” Piker said.
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