The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a ruling that allows federal agents to manually search the cell phone of any traveler entering the country —via airport, land border, or seaport— without the need for a judicial order, probable cause, or individualized reasonable suspicion.
The decision, issued in the case United States v. Alisigwe, establishes that manual inspection of a cell phone constitutes a "routine border search" protected by the border exception of the Fourth Amendment, equating the device to the ordinary luggage of a traveler.
What does the ruling say?
The judge Steven Menashi, author of the majority opinion, was emphatic: “No suspicion is required before the government can search a traveler’s cellphone at the border.”
The court based its position on the constitutional doctrine that has recognized since the 18th century the sovereign right of the State to control who and what enters the country, a power deemed "reasonable" without the need for a judicial order or probable cause.
Menashi rejected extending the precedent established in Riley v. California (2014) to the border context, in which the Supreme Court required a warrant to search a cell phone during an ordinary police arrest, arguing that the border exception is based on a different justification: the State's sovereign interest.
The ruling also dismissed the notion that the First Amendment alone imposes an additional judicial requirement, rejecting the arguments of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who acted as amici curiae and warned that the decision “leaves the most sensitive information of Americans exposed to border searches with no suspicion whatsoever.”
The separate opinion and the debate on privacy
Judge Eunice C. Lee agreed with the conviction but issued a separate opinion, questioning whether a cell phone should be treated the same as a suitcase.
Lee warned that "a review without suspicion could allow access to everything from medical records and financial data to personal messages and internet searches", noting that today's phones can store hundreds of gigabytes of photographs, communications, and browsing history that can reconstruct significant aspects of a person's life.
Where does it apply and what does it cover?
The ruling has a direct effect on the jurisdiction of the Second Circuit, that is, New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, including airports such as JFK and LaGuardia.
The decision exclusively covers basic or manual searches: an agent can browse the content of the device —photos, messages, contacts, locally stored files— without connecting it to external equipment.
The policy of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) distinguishes this modality from advanced forensic search, which does require reasonable suspicion and supervisory approval.
The agents must also disable the network connections before starting, so that only the locally downloaded content is exposed, not the cloud-stored content.
The case that led to the ruling
The resolution arose from the criminal proceedings against Chinwendu Alisigwe, a legal permanent resident who, between 2017 and 2020, opened 36 bank accounts using false documents in the names of real individuals, transferring millions of dollars to China and the United Kingdom.
In February 2019, HSI and CBP agents detained him at JFK, demanded he unlock his phone, and photographed images containing names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers of the victims.
In 2021, during a second inspection, agents photographed a WhatsApp message in which Alisigwe coordinated with an accomplice the receipt of stolen identity information.
He was sentenced to five years in prison, with an increase of 18 points in the sentence for an intentional loss of at least 3,500,000 dollars and an additional two points for obstruction of justice.
Implications for travelers
The ruling does not create a national automatic rule, but according to a report from La Opinión, no federal circuit has required a judicial order for manual searches of cell phones at the border so far.
Foreign visitors have the least leeway to oppose: refusing may result in immigration consequences or increased scrutiny.
An American citizen, on the other hand, can refuse to provide the password to their phone, and authorities must still allow them entry.
In fiscal year 2025, CBP conducted 55,318 searches of electronic devices, a 17.6% increase compared to the previous year, highlighting a sustained upward trend that this ruling could accelerate.
Este fallo afecta a cualquier persona que cruce la frontera estadounidense. Sigue de cerca todas las novedades sobre políticas migratorias, derechos de viajeros y cambios en la frontera en nuestra sección de
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