In Trump’s America, no one is safe from government harassment and abuse. As we have seen, anyone can be picked up while walking along the street by masked people, bundled into unmarked vehicles, and ‘disappeared’, just like what happens in the worst kinds of despotic regimes. The abducted person may end up in a distant detention center and kept in awful conditions or even deported to countries like El Salvador that are notorious for their terrible prisons. You can see a list of recent such cases here.

So it is a good idea for everyone to know what rights they have and what they should do if ever they ever find themselves being taken in and questioned by the police or agents of the government for anything at all, however minor it may seem, like a traffic stop. This one-minute long video by longtime civil rights attorneys Bill Goodman and Denise Heberle, who look like a pair of genteel grandparents, succinctly tells you exactly what you should do in such situations.

If you want an elaboration of why you should follow that excellent advice (and how and why so many people get into trouble because they fail to do so), see this video by law professor James Duane that went viral in 2008.

These videos have become popular in the aftermath of the questioning of Hasan Piker, a person with a large social media following, at Chicago airport when he returned from a trip to France. He was taken aside by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and questioned but Piker did not shut up and argued with the people questioning him. He was released after a couple of hours and then spoke about it on his social media platform.

Piker, recounting the incident on his Twitch live stream on Monday, said he was led to a private room at Chicago O’Hare airport and interviewed for nearly two hours about his political views.

“The goal here is to put fear into people’s hearts, to have a chilling effect on speech that, like, the government is unafraid of intimidating you,” Piker said. “Does this stop me from saying whatever the fuck I want to say? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. But the reason why I wanted to talk about it was to give you more insight into what the government is doing, and to speak out against this sort of stuff.”

The leftwing streamer has built a mass following on YouTube and Twitch around his blend of political, cultural and social commentary. Piker, born in New Jersey, was carrying a US passport when he re-entered the US on Sunday, after a trip to France with his family to celebrate Mother’s Day.

“I think they did it because they know who the fuck I am, and they wanted to put the fear of God into me,” Piker said.

Piker repeatedly described the exchange as “cordial” but said he was transparent with the officer interviewing him that he planned to speak out about his experience, which the streamer said felt anything but random and “routine”.

Assuming the officer was familiar with his online commentary, Piker said he was candid about his views, telling the agent he was “not fond” of the US president.

He said the officer was particularly focused on his criticism of Israel’s prosecution of the Gaza war, asking him: “Do you like Hamas? Like, do you support Hamas? Do you think Hamas is a resistance group?”
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Piker said neither his phone nor laptop were searched. He said the interview ended shortly after he asked whether he was being detained or if he was free to go. The officer told him he had not been detained, but Piker described it as a de facto detention.

There has been a backlash to Piker’s behavior even from people who are on his side politically, that it can give people the wrong idea that verbally jousting with CBP, ICE, or any other agents of the government is a good thing.

When Hasan Piker was stopped and questioned about his political views by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at Chicago’s O’Hare airport last Sunday, the popular leftwing streamer thought he knew exactly what their motive was. “Obviously the reason for why they’re doing that is, I think, to try to create an environment of fear,” he told his legion of fans on a Twitch stream in which he described his ordeal. “To try to get people like myself … to shut the fuck up.”

But the decision by Piker – a 33-year-old US citizen – to entertain the agents’ questions for nearly two hours has some of the self-described socialist’s fans and allies questioning why he didn’t do just that.
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The backlash continued as word of Piker’s detention garnered international headlines. (CBP confirmed Piker was stopped for inspection but denied that he was targeted for his political beliefs.) The veteran tech blogger Mike Masnick criticized Piker for giving his fans “a masterclass in what not to do when detained by CBP” on TechDirt, writing: “While CBP’s behavior was egregious, Piker’s response was potentially even more dangerous … With his massive platform, he’s teaching millions of followers exactly the wrong lesson about dealing with law enforcement – that if you’re clever enough, privileged enough, or ‘experienced’ enough at handling conflict, you can somehow talk your way through it. This is exactly the kind of thinking that leads people to waive their rights and incriminate themselves.”
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Piker checks many of the boxes for apparent targets of Trump administration repression: he is young, leftwing, outspokenly critical of US policy on Israel and the Middle East, and of Turkish descent. He is also hugely influential among young people and fiercely anti-Trump. But crucially, he’s a native-born US citizen, which means he enjoys all of the constitutional rights generally covered in “know your rights” hearings.

Piker was not unaware of this kind of advice, which has been standard “security culture” practice among leftwing activists for decades. He responded to criticism in the chat as it poured in, exclaiming, “Dude, what are you talking about? I know that under normal circumstances I’m supposed to say I want a lawyer … But this is – nothing I’m doing is illegal and I also wanted to see what would happen … Instead of immediately lawyering up I was like, ‘No I’m going to entertain this. I’m going to see what they actually are trying to get out of this.’”

This is the trap that people who are knowledgeable about the law and are articulate can fall into. You imagine yourself engaging in a verbal duel with government agents and besting them or at least later exposing the way they operate. But the fact is that all the cards are on their side and they do not need to ‘win’ the debate on the facts or the law to put you in deep trouble.

For US citizens accustomed to the protections of the first, fourth and fifth amendments, the border can present an unexpected legal gauntlet. (The situation is even more fraught for visa and green card holders.) Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures do not apply in full at the border, explained Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology project, because the supreme court has ruled that the government has an overriding interest in preventing certain people and objects from entering the country. This is why the government can search your baggage without a warrant or individualized suspicion when you re-enter the country, something that would be forbidden elsewhere in the country.

CBP has the authority to verify your citizenship and ask basic questions about your travel and the items you are bringing into the country, Freed Wessler said. Further questions – especially about first amendment protected areas such as political and religious beliefs or associations – are not appropriate and do not need to be answered. CBP can also perform a “manual” search of your devices, though they cannot compel you to provide a passcode, which is why Piker was correct to advise people to turn off biometric access to devices before travel.
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But Ría Thompson-Washington, the president of the National Lawyers Guild and an attorney who regularly leads “know your rights” trainings for activists around the country, said that it was a common misstep for people who know their rights to fail to exercise them. “Everybody thinks that knowing your rights is about being able to argue with the police about what your rights are,” they said in an interview. “When you’re in police custody, the things that you say that you think are proving you right – the things that you say that you think are disproving whatever narrative the police have told you that they’re running with – it’s just used against you later.”

Asserting one’s right to stay silent during an encounter with government agents is intimidating, and Thompson-Washington says that they recommend people rely on a few choice phrases to guide their interactions, such as asking, “Am I being detained?” upon being approached by a police officer. If the answer is yes, they say, ask for a lawyer and then remain silent. If the answer is no, walk away and remain silent.

“When you ask that question, it lets the police officer know that you’re aware that you don’t have to say anything,” they said. “You’re signaling to the officer that you’ve at least had training.” And indeed, Piker said that he was finally allowed to leave shortly after he asked whether he was being detained – after about two hours of questioning. “I probably should have asked, ‘Am I being detained?’ from the start,” he said on the stream.

So to repeat because this is so important: If you are ever questioned by the police or any government agent about anything at all: Just shut up. The only thing you should say is ask whether you are being detained. If they say no, leave. If they say yes, assert your Fifth Amendment rights to not speak and ask for a lawyer. Do not worry that this might make you look guilty to the questioner even if you are innocent because their opinion is irrelevant. What you should be most concerned about is what a jury will be told and you can be certain that if you talk, whatever you say can and will be used against you in ways that you never even imagined could be done. The law professor Duane (in the second video above) says it never happens that the agents are so impressed by your arguments and your fluency that they they change their minds about you and let you go. They like it when you talk a lot because eventually you will always, always, say something that they can use against you in court.

So shut up.