Privacy

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.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 7.13.2026 12:00 PM

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(Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

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.

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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........

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