CA4: Individualized suspicion is now required for border searches of electronic devices but it wasn’t in May 2015, so the GFE applies

Warrantless forensic searches of defendant’s devices in May of 2015 lacked the required nexus to the recognized historic rationales justifying the border search exception to the warrant requirement. Officers had probable cause to suspect that defendant had previously committed grave domestic crimes, but these suspicions were entirely unmoored from the sovereign interests applicable to the border search exception. Where a search at the border was so intrusive as to require some level of individualized suspicion, the object of that suspicion had to bear some nexus to the purposes of the border search exception in order for the exception to apply. Therefore, warrantless, nonroutine forensic searches violated the Fourth Amendment. With, however, the uniform precedent that permitted warrantless searches at the border in May 2015, the good faith exception applied. United States v. Aigbekaen, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 34659 (4th Cir. Nov. 21, 2019).

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