2nd Circuit: Border Agents Can Search Your Phone Without Any Suspicion
Border agents can search cellphones without a warrant or reasonable suspicion
A federal appeals court ruled that Customs and Border Protection agents may manually search a traveler's cellphone at the border without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. The 2nd Circuit upheld Chinwendu Alisigwe's conviction but rejected the lower court's reasoning, likening a phone to luggage and declining to extend the Supreme Court's warrant requirement for cellphones seized during arrest. The panel left open whether forensic data extraction might demand more.
Routine searches at the border are reasonable simply because those searches occur at the border. Because the search of Alisigwe's cellphone was a routine search, the government was entitled to conduct the search without suspicion.