New evidence has emerged showing that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was directed to target Iranian-born travelers at border crossings between the U.S. and Canada at the start of this month. The CBC reports:

U.S. border officers working at multiple Canada-U.S. border crossings were instructed to target and interrogate Iranian-born travellers in early January, said a U.S. border officer in an email obtained by CBC News.

The allegation follows reports that up to 200 people of Iranian descent travelling from B.C. — many of them Canadian or U.S. citizens — were detained and questioned for hours at the Peace Arch Border Crossing in Blaine, Wash., during the weekend of Jan. 4.

When the first reports of the detentions in Washington came out, the CBP denied that there had been such an order. That seemed hard to believe at the time, and this new evidence shows that it was false. The CBP officer’s email states that Iranian-born travelers were to be targeted solely because of where they happened to have been born:

In it, the officer told Saunders that CBP’s Seattle Field Office — which covers the Canada-U.S. border from Washington State to Minnesota — directed border officers to ask Iranian-born travellers counterterrorism questions.

The officer claimed that the sole reason Iranian travellers were detained and questioned that weekend was due to their ethnicity. He alleged that the operation was unethical and possibly unconstitutional.

Iranian-Americans shouldn’t be subjected to this harassment from their government, and our government shouldn’t be singling out travelers solely because of their place of birth. It is unacceptable and a violation of their rights, and we should all repudiate this mistreatment. The report quotes one of the travelers whose family was detained along with her:

Negah Hekmati, an Iranian-born U.S. Citizen, was returning home with her husband and two children after a ski weekend in Canada. She said her family was held for questioning at the Peace Arch crossing for five hours during the early hours of Sunday.

“They had our car keys, they had our passports,” she said during a news conference on Jan. 6. “I am here today because of my kids. They shouldn’t experience such things. They are U.S. citizens and this is not OK.”

Based on other reporting, it appears that the same order applied to all U.S.-Canada border crossings. Huffington Post reports on other examples of this harassment, including the experience of a group of Iranian-American women who were detained and questioned in Vermont on their return from Canada:

“It was very bothersome, but I kept answering the same questions,” Fariba said. “There is really nothing you can say or do to stop this. They made me feel very uncomfortable.”

Suri and her friends are trying to push out the memory of what occurred at the border and instead relive the happier moments from the trip. But it’s hard not to think about how they were singled out, particularly when they consider how quickly they accepted that the questions and demands were to be expected as Iranian Americans.

“The painful part for us after reflecting on the way home was looking at how we have accepted this,” Suri said. “That this was a normal thing for us to be subjected to and treated this way. It’s sad.”

Congress should investigate these incidents. They should demand answers from the CBP and the Department of Homeland Security on who was responsible for harassing U.S. and Canadian citizens solely because of their Iranian heritage. No group of Americans should be subjected to such harassment by government officials, and it is not something that any American should expect or have to become used to experiencing.