US border agents can search any traveler’s phone or laptop without a warrant; judges say it’s like checking suitcases

US border agents can manually search a traveler’s phone without a warrant, a court upheld. (AI Photo)

Border agents do not require a search warrant to stop a traveler and go through their electronic items like phones and laptops, an appeals court panel has now ruled. They said the First Amendment does not create a separate requirement that officers obtain a warrant before examining information on a person’s phone.The case was brought by Chinwendu Alisigwe, a Green Card holder, whose phone was searched at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York City. He was later convicted of bank fraud and money laundering and it was those border agents who found evidence on his phone.

Why the court allowed the phone search

The court treated a manual search of a cellphone as a routine border search. Under the longstanding border-search exception, government officials generally have broad authority to inspect people and belongings entering the United States without obtaining a warrant.The judges rejected the argument that a cellphone should receive special constitutional protection simply because it contains substantially more personal information than conventional belongings such as luggage or notebooks.The ruling also distinguished border searches from ordinary police searches inside the US. In its 2014 decision in Riley v California, the US Supreme Court generally required police to obtain a warrant before searching the contents of a cellphone seized during an arrest. The Second Circuit concluded that this rule does not apply in the same way at the international border.

What about the First Amendment?

The case also raised concerns under the First Amendment because phones can contain journalists’ work, private messages, political views, photographs and information about a person’s professional and personal associations.The Second Circuit nevertheless rejected the argument that the First Amendment creates a separate warrant requirement for cellphone searches at the border.The court noted that phones can contain both constitutionally protected expression and information that does not receive First Amendment protection. It also pointed to the government’s authority to enforce immigration and border laws, including restrictions involving certain forms of extremist or terrorist-related expression.

What does this mean for travellers?

For people entering the US, the ruling means that a border officer does not necessarily need to show evidence of wrongdoing before conducting a manual search of a cellphone.That can potentially affect US citizens, Green Card holders, foreign visitors, students, business travellers and others crossing the US border.Civil liberties groups have warned that the ruling leaves highly sensitive personal information accessible to border officials without any suspicion requirement. The Knight First Amendment Institute, which participated in the case, said the decision could have implications for freedom of speech, association and the press.

Not all phone searches are covered by the ruling

An important distinction is that the court ruled on manual searches, such as an officer scrolling through information stored on a phone.It did not resolve all questions surrounding more intrusive forensic searches, in which specialised tools can extract and copy large amounts of data from a device.Other US appeals courts have also drawn a distinction between manual and forensic searches. In July 2026, the Fourth Circuit ruled that manual cellphone searches at the border are routine searches that do not require individualized suspicion, while treating forensic searches differently.The Second Circuit’s ruling therefore does not mean that every possible form of digital search at the US border has been definitively cleared of constitutional restrictions.