{"id":9397,"date":"2013-10-30T07:44:04","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T06:40:59","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-05T06:40:59","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=9397","title":{"rendered":"CA6: Computers taken at airport Customs and transferred to another ICE office still subject to border search"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defendant arrived at Detroit on a flight from Japan, and a random stop resulted in his two computers being seized for examination. He was allowed to leave and fly on, but his computers went to the ICE office in downtown Detroit. The court concludes that the computers were not subjected to an \u201cextended border search\u201d requiring reasonable suspicion. Child pornography was seen on the computer, and he was indicted and convicted. United States v. Stewart<\/a>, 729 F.3d 517 (6th Cir. 2013):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In this case, Stewart was not subjected to an extended border search because his laptop computers never cleared the border. Stewart was randomly stopped and searched at the functional equivalent of a border. Although he was cleared to leave after the initial search, his computers were not. The follow-up, non-forensic examination of the Twinhead computer occurred one day later at a field office twenty miles away from the airport. A routine border search of a laptop computer is not transformed into an “extended border search” simply because it is transported twenty miles beyond the border and examined within twenty-four hours of the initial seizure. In the course of conducting a customs examination, property remains in the custody of CBP and may be tested off-site by private testing or by CBP until “cleared” for entry. See 19 U.S.C. \u00a7\u00a7 1499(a)(1), (a)(2)(B), (b)(1-3), and (c)(1). Notably, it appears that the initial search of the Twinhead computer at ICE’s field office (previewing images) was substantially the same as the search of the Sony computer at the airport (previewing images), a search that Stewart admits was constitutionally permissible. The government could not search the Twinhead computer at the airport simply because it had no way to power-up the laptop given its dead battery and the need for a foreign power cord converter. That the government had to travel twenty miles and wait twenty-four hours to perform the same search that they could have done the previous day had the proper equipment been present at the airport does not transform a routine border search into an extended border search for which reasonable suspicion is required.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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