CA7: Scrolling through def’s cell phone was a reasonable border search

Scrolling through defendant’s cell phone was a reasonable border search. United States v. Eta, 2026 U.S. App. LEXIS 19568 (7th Cir. July 6, 2026):

Indeed, we agreed with the First Circuit’s determination that “warrantless electronic device searches are essential to the border search exception’s purpose of ensuring that the executive branch can adequately protect the border.” Id. at 1308 (quoting Alasaad v. Mayorkas, 988 F.3d 8, 17 (1st Cir. 2021)). That conclusion echoes the Supreme Court’s recognition that “[a]t the border, customs officials” are “charged, along with immigration officials, with protecting this Nation from entrants who may bring anything harmful into this country, whether that be communicable diseases, narcotics, or explosives.” Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 544. In other words, Mendez reasoned that border searches of electronic devices—as a category—advance the border search doctrine’s purposes. It did not call for case-by-case adjudication of whether a particular search in fact advanced one of those purposes. This is consistent with the unequivocal and unqualified language the Supreme Court has used in upholding the authority to conduct border searches. E.g., Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 620 (“It is [an envelope’s] entry into this country from without it that makes a resulting search ‘reasonable.'”). It is also analogous to how the Supreme Court has treated searches incident to lawful arrests, which, like routine searches, do not require individualized suspicion. See Riley, 573 U.S. at 384, 386 (rejecting “case-by-case adjudication” of “whether or not there was present one of the reasons supporting the authority for a search of the person incident to a lawful arrest,” and instead asking “whether application of the search incident to arrest doctrine to this particular category of effects [i.e., cell phones] would untether the rule from the justifications underlying” it (citation modified)).

Even assuming there is room for such case-by-case adjudication, Eta would not prevail. For one thing, preventing a transnational crime like Eta’s furthers the United States’s “inherent authority to protect, and … paramount interest in protecting, its territorial integrity,” as well as its sovereign “right … to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country.” Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. at 152, 153; see Nkongho, 107 F.4th at 381 (searches of electronic devices “conducted under the border search exception are critical” because they “may contain evidence of ongoing transnational criminal activity”); Alasaad, 988 F.3d at 19.

Moreover, the evidence on which Eta relies to prove that this search lacked a “genuine border-related justification” is meritless. Eta first stresses that the FBI coordinated with CBP in advance. We see no constitutional infirmity in such interagency coordination, however, and other courts of appeals agree. See United States v. Carter, 592 F.2d 402, 405-06 (7th Cir. 1979) (participation of Drug Enforcement Agency agent in border search permissible); see also United States v. Levy, 803 F.3d 120, 124 (2d Cir. 2015) (concluding there is “no constitutional reason to prevent … federal law enforcement agents from … supplying information to Customs officials in aid of a border search”); United States v. Gurr, 471 F.3d 144, 149, 374 U.S. App. D.C. 21 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (“Courts have routinely rejected the notion that cooperation among federal agencies renders a border search unlawful.”); United States v. Boumelhem, 339 F.3d 414, 423-24 (6th Cir. 2003).