Columbia Journalism Review

04/10/2025

A growing number of news reports indicate that travelers heading to the US are facing scrutiny at the border, with some subjected to electronic-device searches. US Customs and Border Protection states that such searches aim to identify violations—say, drug trafficking or terrorist activities—and that just 0.01 percent of international travelers will be subjected to them. Still, the new administration has reportedly encouraged officers to “not leave any stone unturned,” as per one immigration lawyer. This has increased anxiety among travelers to the US, particularly visa holders, who have fewer privacy protections at the border. While journalists may carry sensitive information, such as contact information for and communications with protected sources, there are no specific laws preventing border officers from digging through such information during searches. Civil liberties organizations and security researchers, therefore, recommend that travelers familiarize themselves with their rights before traveling and have a plan in place should a border agent ask for their personal devices.

Under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement typically cannot go through someone’s belongings—including their digital devices—unless they can convince a judge there is sufficient suspicion to justify the search. But there is an exception at the border, where the legal landscape tends to be fuzzy, and Congress grants broad authority to regulate who or what enters. Citizens can refuse to hand over passwords to their phones, but doing so may mean tedious travel delays, and immigration officers may detain the devices anyway. Visa holders are in a riskier position. Refusing to comply with a request to unlock one’s phone can lead to denial of entry altogether. The so-called border search exception has been used to target journalists, such as Jeremy Dupin, a documentary filmmaker and permanent resident, who was detained twice by border agents in 2016 after returning from a reporting trip to Haiti. In a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of Dupin and ten other travelers, including several other journalists, Dupin describes how he provided his password to agents because he didn’t know there was an option not to. “With my phone unlocked, agents were able to access some of my most sensitive reporting work, including communications with editors about particular projects and photographs taken while on assignment,” he later wrote. “After extensively questioning me about my work for several hours, agents finally let me go.”