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HEDO ® is the preferred destination for resort hotel, bar & restaurant services & for club & social gatherings. & for club & social gatherings. Shop for your HEDO ® clothing today! hedonism.com Pursue Pleasure ® The World’s Most Iconic Adult Playground HH N E G R I L DIALED IN Miami immigrant advocate sues the federal government over phone seizure. BY B. SCOTT MCLENDON W orried about the legally sensitive data federal agents may have copied from his phone during a two-hour airport interrogation, well-known immigration advocate Thomas Kennedy filed a lawsuit on Thurs- day, Sept. 24, against the United States government over what he described as a frightening over- reach of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authority. Kennedy, a policy consultant for Florida Immigrant Coalition and New Times contrib- utor, was returning from a vacation to Egypt and Turkey on Sept. 6 when CBP agents at Miami International Airport (MIA) stopped him for questioning, an ordeal he detailed in an opinion piece for New Times. While CBP eventually returned the magazines and books they seized, Thomas is more concerned about the emails, texts, calls, contacts, and treasure trove of immigra- tion information they may have cop- ied from his phone before returning it, he told New Times when reached by phone on Friday, Sept. 25. “That’s unfortu- nately how they’ve operated and how they interpret their inspection rights or privi- leges under the law,” Kennedy says. In a post on X, Kennedy wrote, “Lawsuit filed: We are suing the U.S. government to de- mand the return of data taken from my phone after detaining me for over two hours at Mi- ami International Airport.” The lawsuit calls for the immediate return or destruction of any data taken from Thomas’ phone, and argues CBP was acting in retaliation for Kennedy’s work as an immi- gration advocate. Agents “took adverse actions against plaintiff based on his protected speech by subjecting him to secondary inspection and seizing and copying his sensitive, confiden- tial, and privileged phone data,” according to the lawsuit. CBP’s AI tracking system flagged him for some reason, although no one else from his flight seemed to be taken for interrogation like him, Kennedy says. He’s a naturalized U.S. citizen, has no criminal record, was trav- eling back from well-traveled tourist spots, and has no connection to any terrorist or criminal organization, he continued. But he is a well-established name in the South Florida immigration discussion. And that did appear to come up during the inter- rogation, he says. “At one point, the guy asked me if I’m an im- migration lawyer, and I didn’t tell him. The only thing that I said was, ‘I work in the non- profit sector, and I don’t wanna say anything else about that.’ And then at some point in the interrogation he was like, ‘Are you some kind of immigration lawyer?’ And that made me think I was either targeted or they Googled me.” While the interrogation was frightening for Thomas, he says it paints an even scarier picture for travelers who may not know their rights as well as he does. When reached via email, a CBP spokesper- son wrote in a statement to New Times that the agency “has statutory authority to conduct border searches of electronic devices for all persons entering or departing the U.S., regard- less of citizenship, to enforce laws addressing terrorism, child exploitation, drug- and hu- man-smuggling, visa fraud, and national secu- rity threats. The border search will only include an examination of information that is present on the device at the time it is presented for inspection. In Fiscal Year 2025, less than 0.01% of all arriving international travelers had their electronic devices searched by CBP.” Immigration advocate Thomas Kennedy is filing a lawsuit against the federal government. Photo by Arlyn Garcia | METRO | THE LAWSUIT ARGUES CBP WAS ACTING IN RETALIATION FOR KENNEDY’S WORK AS AN IMMIGRATION ADVOCATE. The other woman suing Epstein’s estate, listed as Amy, argues child pornography and/or child sexual abuse material (referred to as CSAM) depicting her is likely to be among the more than 38,000 images that law enforcement seized from Epstein in 2019. The women argue Epstein had help conceal- ing the evidence from law enforcement. Accord- ing to the lawsuit, “in approximately the mid-2000s, Epstein’s Palm Beach home was searched by law enforcement after his first ar- rest. During this search, law enforcement re- ported that Epstein’s computers were conspicuously missing, with wires dangling as if the computers had been hurriedly removed.” The lawsuit further alleges at least one minor victim (a 16-year-old girl) traveled to Epstein’s Palm Beach home, where an assistant took nude photos of her. “When the minor victim traveled to Epstein’s Palm Beach home, assistant Sarah Kellen used a digital camera to take a series of such photo- graphs of the nude girl posing in a sexualized manner at several locations on Epstein’s prop- erty,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit, which asks for more than $5 mil- lion in damages from Epstein’s estate, argues his production, possession and distribution of CSAM is among his most horrific, but often overlooked crimes. “Beginning in the early 1990s until his death in 2019, Epstein, along with his co-conspirators, created and participated in a multi-decade, vast CSAM conspiracy,” the lawsuit reads. Attorneys for neither Amy nor Jane Doe re- sponded to New Times’ telephoned requests for comment by the time of publication. [email protected] Damages from p3