CBP's 45-Minute Trick to Copy Your Phone Without a Warrant
Surveillance control · 30.09.2026

US border control has found a new way to read your private messages without a warrant — just ask to borrow the phone "for a minute." Forty-five minutes, to be precise.

Thomas Kennedy, an Argentine-American writer and immigration rights advocate, has sued the federal government. The demand is simple: delete the data copied from my phone at Miami International Airport.

According to the seven-page complaint, here's how it went down: a CBP agent physically searched the luggage, asked questions about books and magazines, then demanded the phone. Classic "voluntary coercion" — the agent allegedly threatened that without the phone, the interrogation would drag on, and the device itself could be seized indefinitely. Not much of a choice, to put it mildly.

The phone was taken. It was returned 45 minutes later — exactly the amount of time Kennedy believes was needed to copy its contents. After that, he was released without any charges. In other words, not a suspect, not someone who broke the law — just the owner of a smartphone that caught someone's interest.

And it caught their interest for a reason. Kennedy works with the Florida Immigration Coalition, Amnesty International, and the Community Justice Project. During questioning, he was repeatedly asked about his occupation and whether he was an immigration lawyer. It's hard not to notice a pattern when questions about someone's profession come up more often than a routine baggage check would warrant.

Now, according to the activist, his phone still holds a significant amount of personal and professional information — and it's precisely this data he's demanding be deleted through the lawsuit.

The border is a place where ordinary rights somehow operate at half capacity. Convenient: you don't even need to prove you broke any rule. It's enough to have the wrong job and end up in the wrong passport control line.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/09/immigration-advocate-sues-border-agents-for-demanding-his-cell-phone/