Watch this clip from Wall Street Apes, then read our investigation below. Much is left out and I think it might change your opinion… possibly.
Federal Court rules that border agents can confiscate your phone and search your photos, your texts, your banking apps, your DMs and scroll through everything on your phone
The court rules that a manual search of a traveler’s phone at the border is a “routine” border search,… pic.twitter.com/7GtjUXrUIC
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) September 26, 2026
Courts just told CBP a two-minute scroll through a phone is the same legal event as unzipping a suitcase. Democrats called it a police state. The numbers say otherwise.
Wall Street Apes dropped the clip this morning and the usual accounts started howling about “your DMs,” “your banking apps,” and “the end of the Fourth Amendment.” The underlying holding is older than the outrage. A federal appeals court treated a manual search of a traveler’s phone at a U.S. port as a routine border search. No warrant. No probable cause. No reasonable suspicion. Refuse and the phone can sit in a CBP locker for days. Non-citizens who lock the device can be turned around at the gate.
That is the rule at the water’s edge. It has been the rule for luggage since the First Congress authorized customs searches. The fight now is whether a smartphone gets a special pass the suitcase never got.
Two circuits closed that door this year.
On July 13, the Fourth Circuit decided United States v. Belmonte Cardozo. A CBP officer at Dulles asked a traveler arriving from Bolivia to unlock two iPhones. About two minutes later she had enough for an arrest. The panel, writing through Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr., joined every sister circuit that has reached the question: a hand search is routine. A forensic dump with extraction gear is not. Forensic work still needs individualized suspicion.
On September 17, the Second Circuit said the same thing in United States v. Alisigwe. A Trump appointee wrote the majority. Two Biden appointees sat on the panel. One joined the holding. The other concurred. Knight First Amendment Institute counsel Scott Wilkens called it a disaster for “private thoughts and associations.” The court declined to import Riley v. California — the 2014 cell-phone-after-arrest case — onto the customs line.
The policy paper underneath those opinions is CBP Directive 3340-049B, effective January 1, 2026. Basic search: officer reviews what is already on the device, network off, no suspicion required. Advanced search: external equipment, supervisor at GS-14 or higher, and either reasonable suspicion of a law CBP enforces or a national security concern. Cloud accounts stay off limits. Officers are told to put the phone in airplane mode. Privilege material gets a filter team if the traveler actually invokes it.
Democrats and the professional privacy shops want a warrant for all of it. Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Rand Paul have parked the Protecting Data at the Border Act in multiple Congresses. It has never gotten a floor vote. ACLU, EFF, and the Knight Institute keep filing amicus briefs that treat a port of entry like a city sidewalk. House Democrats have spent 2026 bundling “warrantless searches” into a larger brief against ICE and CBP. The argument writes itself for cable: your family photos, your texts, a stranger in a uniform.
CBP publishes the target list they actually run. Child sexual abuse material. Terrorism. Drug, human, firearm, and cash smuggling. Visa fraud and admissibility. Stolen proprietary data. Counterfeit and commercial crimes tied to the crossing. Identity and purpose of travel when the story and the documents do not match. That is the catalog Wall Street Apes put on the graphic, and it matches what CBP tells Congress.
The volume does not look like a dragnet.
In fiscal year 2025, CBP processed more than 419 million travelers at air, land, and sea ports. It searched electronic devices belonging to 55,318 of them. The agency’s own rate: less than 0.01 percent of crossings, and about half a percent of secondary inspections. Roughly 50,922 of those looks were basic manual searches. About 4,396 were advanced. Non-citizens accounted for 41,728 of the devices. U.S. citizens accounted for 13,590. A citizen who refuses the passcode still comes home. The phone can be held. A visa holder who refuses can be refused.
Those citizen numbers are up from 8,657 in fiscal 2023. Privacy groups wave the percentage change. They skip the denominator. Four hundred nineteen million people walked or flew through a port. Fifty-five thousand phones got a look.
The legal line the courts keep drawing is simple. The government’s job at the border is to keep out people and things the country did not invite. A phone can carry the same contraband a hard drive or a manila envelope used to carry. A two-minute gallery scroll is closer to opening a bag than to cloning a disk. Cloning a disk still needs a reason.
Travelers who want less exposure already have the boring tools: power the device all the way down before landing, long passcode, biometrics off, cloud signed out, privilege spoken out loud if you are counsel or clergy. None of that is legal advice. All of it is how the directive actually reads. You can do what Sgt Pat does, he leaves his cell phone home if ever travelling out of the country. He brings a burner phone with just the info needed. That way privacy is assured even if searched.
The freakout is about the suitcase rule landing on a glowing rectangle. The courts just said the rectangle still has to clear customs.
– — The Whatfinger News Team: Beth and Sgt K, with Sgt L and Grok on edits and graphics
From the people…
- Wall Street Apes: Federal Court rules that border agents can confiscate your phone and search your photos, your texts, your banking apps, your DMs and scroll through everything on your phone The court rules that a manual search of a traveler’s phone at the border is a “routine” border search, similar to opening a suitcase. This means no warrant, no probable cause and no reasonable suspicion is required for this search to happen – If you refuse your phone could be confiscated for weeks – Non-citizens can be denied entry if they refuse to present a device in a searchable condition Liberals are losing their mind over this but they are looking for very specific things – Child sexual abuse material is the most common – Terrorism – Drug, human, firearms and cash smuggling – Visa fraud and admissibility – Stolen proprietary data – IP / counterfeit / commercial crimes tied to the border – Identity and purpose of travel when documents or answers look off – Wall Street Apes Post on X
- The freeloading parasites know if they can get into the U.S. the democrats will shower them with benefits to vote blue. – Sandra L
- THIS WONT STAY AT THE BORDER BANK ON IT!! IT WILL SPILL OVER INTO YOUR OWN TOWNS AND COMMUNITIES IF YOU DONT STOP THIS BS!! when the people stop allowing the savages to keep their boots on your necks , they won’t get away with it. they have the public so gawd dam cucked down to obey anything with .gov .edu. .med wtf we the people rule and make the laws …come together as one and bring them down when all of society says no we win!!! apeal the shit, sue the commies who did it, sue those who took your rights ……. that’s not advice it’s logic . The same applies to the phone they use it’s NEW tech. bs to put in what they want , bs it’s the person’s property, they bought it paid for it , more or less own it— now this is how controlled they have society that phone, it’s not yours they can shut off power, take the phone, your homes it’s not your miss a tax payment they take your home you never own it…… taxes keep you from owning it/ anything. LAW AREN’T ALWAYS RIGHT- LAWS AREN’T ALWAYS PERM. – Kelly’s Ghost
References for the article above
References
- Federal Court rules border agents can search your phone
- US v. Cardozo, No. 25-4239 (4th Cir. 2026)
- 4th Circ. Says Manual Cellphone Searches At Border Are Legal
- CBP Directive No. 3340-049B: Border Search of Electronic Devices
- Border Search of Electronic Devices at Ports of Entry
- Biden-appointed judges join Trump nominee to back CBP phone searches
- Appeals court rules officers can search phones at border without warrant
- CBP Can Rifle Through Your Phone by Hand at the Border
- Phone Searches at U.S. Borders: What Travelers Need to Know
- Non-U.S. Citizens More Likely To Have Devices Checked
- Second Circuit Authorizes Suspicionless Border Searches of Travelers’ Digital Devices
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