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The Department of Justice is trying to prosecute a man allegedly involved in the movement against Atlanta’s Cop City for using a “duress” password on his smartphone that reportedly wiped its contents, in a seemingly unprecedented line of prosecution as the Trump administration expands its methods of criminalizing those with left-wing beliefs.

According to The Guardian, the defendant, Sam Tunick, was traveling back from a vacation in the Dominican Republic in January 2025 when he was stopped by an agent at the Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta. His reentry into the country had been flagged by a Homeland Security agent, who circulated an email to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents and a local FBI joint terrorism officer saying that Tunick is being investigated for “suspected terrorism activities.”

Agents interrogated him not about alleged activism, but about child sexual abuse images, as “a pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr Tunick’s connections” into the movement against Cop City, reads a motion filed on behalf of Tunick by his lawyers earlier this year. He was denied access to a lawyer four times during the interrogation, and was not read his rights nor presented a warrant.

The agents pressed Tunick to open his phone and threatened to seize it if he didn’t comply. He eventually provided a password, and CBP........

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