Border Cops Can Search Your Phone Whenever They Want, If You're Within 100 Miles of the Border
They can also search it without a warrant if you're flying abroad. Yes, even if you're an American citizen.
Coming back from a far-flung vacation? Traveling abroad on a business trip? Just happen to find yourself within 100 miles of a U.S. border? I regret to inform you that U.S. Customs and Border Control (CBP) agents can search your phone, laptop, GPS system, smartwatch, or other electronic devices for virtually no reason. No particular suspicion of criminal activity is needed. No probable cause. No warrant.
At "the physical border, the functional equivalent of the border" (such as an incoming or outgoing flight at an international airport), or "the extended border," border policy is to allow device searches "with or without suspicion."
Wilmer Chavarria is trying to change this. The Vermont-based school superintendent is suing the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that his 4th Amendment rights were violated when border agents searched his personal and work devices as he was traveling back to the U.S. after visiting family in Nicaragua.
You are reading Sex & Tech, from Elizabeth Nolan Brown. Get more of Elizabeth's sex, tech, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture coverage.
You may be surprised to learn just how expansive border policies around electronic device searches are.
According to a January 2026 policy directive, CBP agents can search "any device that may contain information in an electronic or digital form, such as computers, tablets, disks, drives, tapes, flash drives, SIM cards, global positioning systems, unmanned aircraft systems, vehicle infotainment systems, smart watches, mobile phones and other communication devices, cameras, music and other media players." If you're entering the country, exiting the country, or within 100 miles of a border, it's fair game.
Broadening Border Search and Data Retention Policies
CBP has long argued that it can search whatever devices it wants to, without a warrant or probable cause, when those searched are coming into the country or within 100 miles of a border. It calls this the border search exception. "While this has historically been a mechanism for fighting smuggling, in a post-9/11 era it has been escalated into a demand to search people's technology and access their files and contents," Reason's Scott Shackford noted in 2019.
In fiscal year 2025, CBP conducted 55,318 border searches of electronic devices. Most of these searches involved noncitizens, but 13,590 of them involved U.S. citizens.
This is a large leap from 2023, when just 37,778 border searches of electronic devices were conducted in total and just 8,657 of these searches involved U.S. citizens.
And it's an enormous leap from 2015, when there were around 8,500 such searches for citizens and noncitizens alike, according to a policy explainer from the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing Chavarria. "Increasingly, CBP officers also perform warrantless searches of personal electronic devices such as cell phones and computers" and "sometimes even retain data from devices," write Kyle Sweetland, Amy Peikoff, and Mitchell Scacchi.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration quietly issued new guidance on CBP's power to search devices.
Under a 2018 directive, electronic devices were defined as "any device that may contain information in an electronic or digital form, such as computers, tablets, disks, drives, tapes, mobile phones and other communication devices, cameras, music and other media players." That earlier definition may have included flash drives, SIM cards, a vehicle's GPS, drones, car infotainment systems, and smart watches—these are, after all, devices "that may contain information in an electronic or digital form." But it did not specifically list these devices as fair game for warrantless search.
The new directive does. And I think it's safe to assume that's not an accident. It suggests that border agents are or will be increasingly searching these sorts of devices. That they're being encouraged, or at least explicitly permitted, to move beyond things like tablets, computers, and phones.
CBP agents have also been given an additional justification for holding on to your data.
Under both the old policy and the new one, they can retain data if they have probable cause that it relates to contraband, crime, or immigration law enforcement. But if "there exists no probable cause to seize the information, CBP will retain no copies of the information," the old directive said.
Under the new policy, digital data can be kept if doing so may be "consistent with discovery obligations in ongoing or reasonably anticipated litigation."
Without defining any further what might trigger a "reasonable anticipation" of litigation, that gives CBP pretty broad authority to retain any and all data under the theory that doing so might be necessary as part of a future lawsuit.
Advanced Searches OK Without Reasonable Suspicion
The new directive might also extend border search prerogatives in other ways, including expanding the circumstances under which border authorities can conduct an advanced search.
A basic search—defined in the latest directive as one "in which an officer conducts a review or analysis of information residing in electronic or digital form on the device"—can be conducted "with or without suspicion."
This includes searches in which authorities use their equipment "to bypass a password, overcome encryption, translate content, view files contained in an external drive or other electronic device lacking a screen, or charge a device."
But to conduct an advanced search—one in which authorities use special equipment "to copy and/or analyze the contents of an electronic device"—CBP agents must offer at least some sort of reason for conducting a search.
Under the old policy, advanced searches could only be conducted when there was "reasonable suspicion of activity in violation of the laws enforced or administered by CBP, or in which there is a national security concern."
That sentence is a little confusingly worded—does a "national security concern" alone justify an advanced search, or must agents have reasonable suspicion of a national security concern?
Under the new policy, any such ambiguity is cleared up. An officer "may perform an advanced search of an electronic device only in instances in which there is reasonable suspicion of activity in violation of the laws enforced or administered by CBP or, in the absence of individualized reasonable suspicion[,] when there is a national
security concern," it says.
Immigration lawyer Rosanna Berardi thinks this change of language is significant. Advanced device searches "can now happen based on a national security concern alone, without reasonable suspicion," she recently posted.
Berardi has pointed out another way that CBP's rationale for why searches can be conducted has changed. "The earlier directive focused heavily on issues like terrorism, national security, smuggling, child exploitation offenses, and commercial crimes," Berardi said in a recent video:
The new version explains that discussion and adds several additional categories, including firearms, smuggling, export controlled information, proprietary data theft, restricted information, and digital contraband. Now, why does this matter?
Because policy language often tells us how an agency is thinking about enforcement. Whenever I see a list of concerns get broader, I pay close attention. Doesn't automatically mean more searches are going to happen tomorrow. It doesn't necessarily mean the average traveler is going to notice any difference at all. But it does suggest that CBP is looking at a wider range of issues when evaluating information found on electronic devices.
What's more, the directive "specifies no basis upon which such a [national security] 'concern' must rest," notes the Pacific Legal Foundation's Chavarria complaint.
Some Limitations
Under both the new and old policies, CBP agents can search only the data that is stored on your device and "accessible through the device's operating system or through other software, tools, or applications." They cannot legally access data "that is solely stored remotely."
That seems important to keep in mind if you're ever being asked to hand over your devices for CBP agents to search.
The policy directives even advise agents to "request that the traveler disable connectivity to any network (e.g., by placing the device in airplane mode and disabling Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections)" or that officers themselves do this.
"Officers should also take care to ensure, throughout the course of a border search, that they do not take actions that would make any changes to the contents of the device," they say.
And for what it's worth, authorities aren't supposed to hang onto device passwords. "Passcodes or other means of access should only be recorded by the officer in a temporary format and should not be uploaded into CBP systems," states the latest directive.
Fighting Back
Wilmer Chavarria and the Pacific Legal Foundation are asking for way more limitations on border searches of electronic devices.
Their case against DHS stems from a 2025 incident at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport. There, CBP agents detained Chavarria for more than four hours. They consented to release him only after he let them search his personal phone and tablet and his work laptop.
The work laptop contained student records, and Chavarria objected to it being searched, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. "When he objected, he was told he had no Fourth Amendment rights at the border," it says. "Moreover, he was told he was behaving suspiciously simply by asserting those rights and refusing to consent to the device searches," and "his requests to contact his family and lawyer were denied during the detention."
This is illegal, the Pacific Legal Foundation argues. "The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits 'unreasonable searches and seizures' of 'persons, houses, papers, and effects,'" it points out.
"The documents, media, and information stored on [Chavarria]'s devices, as well as the devices themselves, are his private property and are 'papers' and 'effects' protected by the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures," they argue. And CBP "policies authorizing warrantless, suspicionless searches and seizures of electronic devices at the border, to which [Chavarria] has been subjected in the past and is at risk of being subjected to in the future, violate the Fourth Amendment."
In the News
The end of reading? The Atlantic last week published a piece called "The End of Reading Is Here." It's framed as a serious and sobering look at the decline of (a certain sort of) reading in America, and it's heavy with the well-worn laments about technology, from TV to tablets and phones, that this might suggest. Kindergartners are getting tablets! TikTok is like cocaine to a lab rat! Romance novels are no Doctor Zhivago!
It's the kind of piece that seems tailor-made to reassure the kinds of people who read The Atlantic that the world is is danger because of the declining population of people who read legacy political magazines. I kept waiting for something new, something to justify all the buzz that this (very lengthy) piece was getting, but the whole thing reads rather predictably.
There are some interesting tidbits, like this one:
A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023.
But dramatic statistics like this might be misleading. As the article points out, "the study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book." It did not include reading blogs, emailed newsletters, news websites, or the other sorts of digital sources that many people consume daily.
The time use study (https://t.co/R7KLOxWWNk) covers print newspapers and magazines, but it says its "measures are…unlikely to have included" their online counterparts, "such as reading blogs or the news online." So we don't know how much of that fall is just a change in medium. https://t.co/tKypNusOJm
— Jesse Walker (@notjessewalker) July 10, 2026
Among those who did read for pleasure between 2004–2023, the average time spent reading was highest in 2023. And some of the earlier studies included reading the Bible and scripture as reading for pleasure while later ones did not, which may have skewed things.
It's also not a given that just because book reading has declined it will continue to, or that it couldn't possibly rebound, as Jonathan Minnema points out. Younger generations are continuously rediscovering and falling in love with the analog, there's a big backlash against social media, etc. (Even the shorter sentences found in today's books aren't necessarily indicative of something ominous, Minnema suggests. Maybe it's a sign that "writers are getting better.")
There's also a question of whether this is really a crisis of reading or a crisis of understanding:
Great piece but the headline is misleading and I worry will make it harder to address the problem at hand. People are reading more than ever per the article, they're just losing comprehension skills. That seems like a much more difficult problem to fix https://t.co/wc9unvjMWP
— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) July 8, 2026
The piece does acknowledge that "Americans are probably reading more words than ever before," but it says they're reading "textual fragments" instead of giving "sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information." The author suggests that this is contributing to a decline in overall reading comprehension. And that's at least plausible (if not the only potential explanation). I wish this piece would have just honed in on that aspect, rather than presenting it as part a much longer and more dramatic but also less nuanced and substantiated "No one is reading! Reading is dead!" narrative.
More Sex & Tech
What if it's not the phones? Another Atlantic article explores how psychologist Peter Gray—a former colleague of Jonathan Haidt—is promoting the heterodox idea that children need more freedom to play and explore in the physical world and also to play and explore online. Gray's book Restoring Childhood will be published in September.
"To grow up well, children have to be able to play in the world that they're growing up in," said Gray, who describes Haidt's blame-the-phones book The Anxious Generation as maddening and "unethical." (For more of Gray's critique of Haidt's book, go here.) And Gray isn't alone in his criticisms: "I spoke with more than a dozen people who study technology and child development, and many expressed concern that Haidt overstates the strength of correlational findings and suggests causation where it hasn't been proved," writes The Atlantic's Kaitlyn Tiffany.
Biohacking pregnancy: "Pregnancy meant my commitment to biohacking was about to get more intense—even as the tools available were about to get less useful," writes Sarah Rose Siskind in a delightful Reason essay about biohacking while pregnant:
I now recommend procreation to everyone I meet at parties the same way I used to push creatine. My son has put more serotonin in my brain than any Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor ever has. One could say I biohacked my soul. And it feels optimal.
Blue laws for babymaking? Reason's Meagan O'Rourke discusses the Institute for Family Studies' absurd recommendations for boosting birth rates:
It's Sunday. You want to go into town to run errands and perhaps see your friends at a bar, but you stay home because blue laws have forced businesses to close on the Lord's day. You consider going online, but there is an excise tax on data usage, and all non-essential webpages have been disabled for the day. You have been invited, however, to a city-sponsored lecture by a C-list celebrity on the importance of restoring the fertility rate. Do you want to have a baby now? Are you feeling in the mood?
