Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason
In her newsletter for Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown highlighted a recently filed petition for review asking the Supreme Court to consider immigration agents’ practice of “seiz[ing] and search[ing] your stuff—including your cellphone, your laptop, or any other electronic device—without a warrant and without suspicion if you’re around the border or flying into or out of the country.” Are such searches constitutional? “Federal courts have disagreed,” according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the petitioner, George Anibowei, “an immigration lawyer and a naturalized U.S. citizen” who “frequently travels internationally” and has had his phone searched by immigration authorities five times over the past decade. “Two federal circuits hold that a warrant is generally required at the border, while six … hold that a warrant is never required.”
