What are your thoughts on the statements from several US Customs and?
The linked article is balanced. The behavior of DHS and CBP regarding controlling who communicates to media is in line with the behavior of almost every Federal agency before the Trump administration, and so basically, the agencies are returning to the pre-Trump mode. The unnamed CBP officials using the term gag order makes the restrictions sound ominous when they arent. In the modern era, communicating with the media can take many forms other than literally talking to a reporter. Posting videos of stuff regarding the work is also communicating with the media. I work for a medium sized company today and have for 20 years. All of the employees work under an unofficial gag order of exactly the type the unnamed CBP officials describe. I worked at a university before working for the company. All of the employees worked under a similar set of rules/guidelines regarding media contacts. I worked at NASA before that. There was definitely the same kind of restriction about talking to the media directly. I worked there in the latter half of the 1980s. Im fairly certain the same kind of restriction is still in place. All organizations, including government agencies, have a right to expect that their employees will accomplish their assigned tasks, and leave tasks they are not assigned to those to whom the tasks are assigned. Organizations have the right to move tasks around among employees. This includes the task of interacting with the media. Agencies like DHS and CBP have employees who are assigned the task of interacting with the media, and coordinating any media requests for interviews, etc. CBP expects agents at the border to focus on their assigned tasks, which Im pretty sure have not included independent interactions with media regarding their jobs for a long time. As the article mentions, there is no official order. Even if there was, it would not be a gag order, but rather a reestablishing and reinforcing of norms regarding media contacts that are quite common throughout the Federal government, private companies, and other medium to large sized organizations.