CBP Agents Held This U.S. Citizen for Hours Until He Agreed To Let Them Search His Electronic Devices

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/cbp-agents-held-u-citizen-202505002.html

Last July, Wilmer Chavarria, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Vermont, was returning from Nicaragua, where he had visited his mother and other relatives, when he was detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston for no apparent reason. Chavarria was held for more than four hours and released only after he finally agreed to let the agents search his smartphone, tablet, and laptop computer. The agents, who persistently pressured Chavarria to surrender his devices and the passwords for them, informed him that he had no Fourth Amendment right to resist.

They were wrong about that, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) says in a lawsuit it filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes CBP. "Americans don't surrender their constitutional rights as the price of international travel," the PLF says. "CBP policies that claim to give its employees the power to search and seize electronic devices without a warrant violate the Fourth Amendment and therefore should be set aside."

The Fourth Amendment guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" against "unreasonable searches and seizures." It also specifies that judicial warrants, which are ordinarily required for searches, must be based on "probable cause" supported by "oath or affirmation" and must "particularly" describe the target of the search and "the persons or things to be seized."

[Figarosmom]

1. Sad that we have to resort to

Using a burner when we travel or mailing our devices to ourselves instead of carrying them on a plane.

[jfz9580m]

2. Bookmarking

I am guessing the same protections don’t apply to Greencard holders or visitors? Earlier this year a French scientist was stopped from entering the US over something innocuous on his phone.

I had a Greencard I abandoned back in 2014. I was worried about this whole Panopticon from 2011 and I felt even pre-Trump that with the way it was and is being normalized, I might be able to pushback better in my home country since I am not very good with organizing with people outside a kind of left that has only started being more vocal and visible (to me anyway) lately.

Back in those days it was just the ACLU..which struck me at least as a bit of a hoary dinosaur.

Nowadays I hope more young and genuinely progressive lawyers like Lina Khan and Alec Karakatsanis may start sprouting up in democracies the world over to challenge these robber barons of Google, Facebook, Microsoft as well as small creepy companies that exist in the woodwork.

There was a group that caught my eye locally a few years ago. Unfortunately they had such a generic name I can’t remember it. It looked like a good group but it had a very unmemorable name. I must check them out…

[cliffside]

3. Chicago woman detained by federal agents among five U.S. citizens to testify in Washington

https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/12/09/tammy-duckworth-senate-hearing-illegal-dhs-arrests-chicago-woman-testimony

"... Figueroa was one of five U.S. citizens who offered their accounts during a bicameral public forum, despite the U.S. Department of Homeland Security repeatedly claiming they are not arresting U.S. citizens.

The witnesses included Wilmer Chavarria, a school superintendent in Vermont, who was detained after returning to the U.S. from visiting family overseas; Javier Ramirez, who was held for four days in California and denied medical treatment for diabetes; George Retes, a U.S. Army veteran, who was arrested and detained during a raid at his job site in southern California and detained for three days; and Andrea Velez, of California, who was on her way to work in Los Angeles when she was caught in a raid and charged with assaulting an officer, a charge that was later dropped for Velez. She said she is 4 foot 11 inches and did not assault an officer...."

... Sen. Dick Durbin, who introduced Figueroa as a witness, said her family was frantically searching for her when they saw a video of her arrest online. They were able to track her phone to the Broadview facility, he said..."


U.S. Citizen Wilmer Chavarria testifies about his detainment and search when re-entering the country
Oversight Committee Democrats

[hunter]

4. What happens to someone with a stupid flip phone...

... and a laptop that boots up with no history?

I'm not paranoid, it's just that I'm easily distracted and really good at losing things when I travel.

DemocraticUnderground is my only "social media" and I don't suppose I have to tell anyone that.

The last time I was pulled aside by TSA I think it was because they needed a white guy to prove they weren't being racially biased. I'd been in line watching them harass a black family, with little kids and a baby who they finally let pass after they decided a breast pump wasn't a bomb. When it was my turn, being the weird white guy traveling alone from California, they decided to dig through all my stuff too.

Fortunately I'd remembered to pack all my prescription meds in their original containers and put my Swiss army knife in checked luggage.

They left a nice little note in my checked luggage too, just to let me know they were keeping me safe.