Is it safe to travel to the United States with your phone right now?

In recent weeks, Customs and Border Protection agents (CBP) collected general protests to deprive travelers of the entry of the United States based on searches for their phones. A doctor in the H-1B visa was deported to Lebanon after CBP found “sympathetic pictures and videos” of Hezbollah leaders. A French scientist was removed after the search for messages devices criticizing the Trump administration discounts to the search programs, which the officers said, “Transferred Trump’s hatred” and “could be eligible for terrorism.” Since the administration increases the pressure in order to move away from legal immigrants, its justifications have become thinner and thinner – but travelers can still benefit from knowing what is supposed to be their legal rights.

Your ability to refuse to search depends on your immigration status – and in some cases, where and how the country enters. The courts throughout the country have issued various rulings on search operations for devices in entry ports. But regardless of your situation, there are precautions that you can take to protect your digital privacy.

Search for the CBP device was relatively rare. During the 2024 fiscal year, less than 0.01 percent of international travelers who reached their phones, computers, or other electronic devices that CBP searched, according to the agency. That year, CBP 47,047 officers have searched for devices. But even before this last wave of accidents, the inspections were high: eight years ago, during the 2016 fiscal year, CBP searched only 19,051 devices.

Exclude “Border Research”

In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that the searches for mobile phones for individuals had violated the fourth amendment. But there is one exception to this rule: searches that occur on the border. The courts have seen that the border searches are “simply reasonable because they occur on the border”, and this means in most cases, CBP and Proder Patrol do not need an order given the property of travelers – including their phones. This exception applies beyond the United States’s craft borders, because airports are also border areas.

“Traditionally, the border research was excluded in the fourth amendment of customs officers to search for things like luggage. The idea was that everything you took with you is closely related to your travel.” freedom. The point was the search for people or unacceptable things in the country.

These days, most travelers carry a lot in their pockets – not only the information stored on the phone devices, but anything can be accessed through data connection. Hussein said: “When you look at the devices, the data you carry with you is not only related to your travel. These data can precede your travel in more than a decade due to the amount of information stored on the cloud.” “Every aspect of your life can appear. You can show your financial history, your medical history, and your contacts with your doctor and your lawyer. You can reveal a lot of information that is absolutely not similar to a customs employee’s concept looking for your luggage.” Privacy advocates have warned of this issue for years, but in an environment the officers seek any pretext to remove someone, it is a greater problem.

If you are an American citizen, “You have the right to say no” to search, “and they are not allowed to ban from the country,” Hussein said. But if you refuse, CBP can still take your phone, laptop or other devices and stick to it.

Permanent residents can refuse to search similarly, but with complex factors. If a person with a green card leaves the United States for more than 180 days, they will be examined due to “inaccuracy” – the reasons that may prevent it from entering – upon returning to the country. Green card holders who have certain crimes in their record may be considered unacceptable. This seems to be the case with Fabian Schmidt, the permanent resident whose family said was “violently interrogated” by CBP agents at Boston Logan Airport after returning from a trip to Europe. Because of these factors, permanent population may not feel comfortable to refuse to search, even if he does not do so from entering the country.

Visa holders have lower rights to entry ports, and the research refusal may lead to their refusal to enter the country.

There are two types of searches for devices that CBP officials can perform: basic, forensic, or advanced. Hussein said: “There is a distinction that the government draws it between searching for your phone and looking only to what it is, in exchange for connecting your phone to external equipment to search for it using advanced algorithms or to copy the contents of your phone.”

The government confirms that it does not need an order to perform “basic” inspections of the contents of a person’s phone. During these searches, Hussein explained, the agents are supposed to put your phone on plane mode and they can only look at what can be accessed in a non -connection mode – but this could be a lot of information, including any cloud data currently synchronically.

“While criminal inspections are strong, a lot of harm can occur through material inspection,” by “law enforcement,” said Tom McBranin, a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, also said. freedom.

For the largest part, the courts avoided the issue of whether CBP can conduct unjustified basic search operations for a person or laptop, allowing the agency effectively. But there is one geographical exception to this rule. Last year, a federal judge in the Eastern Province of New York spent that CBP could not perform any unjustified inspections of passengers. This ruling does not apply anywhere in the country, but the boycott includes John F. Kennedy in Queens-Six Airport in the United States. This ruling applies to basic inspections and forensic medicine.

Elsewhere in the country, the judges imposed some restrictions on advanced searches. Unjustified forensic inspections are allowed and prohibited in others, depending on how the courts of various federal circle are ruled. The Supreme Court can erase this by a ruling applying at the national level, but avoiding the question for years.

“Your rights will be different depending on whether you are on a landing trip in Boston Logan in the first circle or Reagan/Dallas in the fourth circle,” said McB. Likewise, your rights will be different if you cross the border in Arizona (ninth circle) or New Mexico (the tenth circle). This does not make sense, but the Supreme Court has continued to constantly address these clashes by constantly denying petitions for martyrdom in the cases that caused the question. “

Some courts were more lenient than others. The ninth circle – which includes Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idahu, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington – prohibits criminal inspections without justification unless officers search for “digital smuggling”, such as sexual assault materials. The fourth circle – which covers Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Verginia and Virginia – prohibits forensic inspections without justification unless the officers search for information related to continuous border violations, such as human smuggling or drug smuggling.

In 2023, a federal judge in the southern province of New York died that the exclusion of the border research did not extend to forensic inspections, which need orders. (It is strange that the issue concerned included a search by phone at the Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey, a state in a different federal circle from New York.) Judge Gaid Rakov wrote, “The extension of the government’s arrival to the person and luggage from the border border-as if the reality of exchanging the borders to some extent to search for the traveler and the office.”

Not all judges agree. In 2021, Adam Malik, the immigration lawyer, filed a lawsuit against CBP after the agents at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport on his phone and searched the contents without a judicial order. According to the lawsuit, Malik’s phone was taken although it is registered in the global entry, which is the trusted traveler program for CBP. Since the agents were unable to bypass the Malik password, they sent the phone to the forensic laboratory, which extracted all phone data.

A federal court has ruled in favor of the Ministry of National Security, saying that the research that was not justified did not violate the rights of Malik. When the owner of the Fifth Circle – which covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas – appealed to the judges that the research did not require an order. However, the court also expressed “the lack of a view on how to develop or clarify the research exemption in future cases.”

In other words, these search operations are still an open question – CBP will not stop making it even if it is not explicitly prevented from doing this.

These differences are important because they determine a person’s basis for inspection of difficult devices in court. But given the recent Trump administration’s registry of ignoring the law and violation of judicial orders, limiting what can be found on your phone is a safer bet of the government’s prosecution on illegal research after the truth.

Instead of trying to get rid of the rights you enjoy depending on your migration status and the airport in which you fly (or the wild borders you cross), the best way to keep your devices safe from CBP is to reduce them.

Hussein said: “We always encourage the reduction of data when crossing the borders. You want to travel as much as possible.”

Before traveling, you should encrypt your devices and make sure that you use safe passwords. Travelers must disable biometric records such as the face identifier, because some courts have ruled that the police cannot force you to inform them of a password, but they are He can Use vital measurements to cancel your phone insurance.

EFF recommends that travelers limit what can be found during searches for the basic phone or laptop by downloading their data on the cloud and deleting them from their devices – and ensuring that it is completely It has been removed, as agents can also search for files “recently deleted” for your phone during basic searches. Customs agents are supposed to maintain your phone on placing the plane while conducting a basic search, but this still allows them to see any temporary stored email, text messages and other contacts. The best way to protect this information is to back up on the cloud, then wipe your phone or laptop completely.

Sensitive or personal data reserves not only prevents others from accessing your device; It also guarantees that you do not lose this data if CBP takes on your phone or computer. McBrien also suggests that people stop their phones when they cross the border or at the airport. “Shuting up the phone means that when it is running again, it requires a traffic code, whether you are using FaceID or other biometric measures,” said McBranin.

In a better legal environment, these precautions will not be the only useful shield between you and the border research. “Without strong constitutional and legal protection, personal options on how to form an individual device and applications can only be mitigated – and not eliminating the risks examined by border devices in its privacy and speech rights,” said McB. Currently, if CBP really wants to look at your phone, they may find a way. But you can still protect yourself as possible.