And U.S. citizen Lennon Tyler said she was chained to a bench by border agents last month when her German fiancé, Lucas Sielaff, was accused of violating the rules of his 90-day U.S. tourist permit while trying to enter from Mexico. Sielaff was detained for two weeks before returning to Germany, according to The Associated Press.
Such incidents have prompted some governments to issue warnings for their citizens traveling to the U.S. The updated British travel advisory reads “you may be liable to arrest or detention if you break the rules.”
Those warnings have potential visitors to the U.S., like Pat Bastow, a Canadian citizen who plans to rent a car to visit Montana in July for a three-week holiday, seeking advice on how to protect themselves.
“A lot of travel agents are warning people not to go just in case Trump deports,” Bastow, a retired cattle farmer, told NBC News.
Hussain, the lawyer, said she is “encouraging people to think about uploading some of their data to the cloud and downloading it once you’re through screening.”
Turning phones off before arrival is also helpful, she said, as doing so disables facial recognition until a passcode is entered.
Travelers’ rights vary depending on their status — whether they are U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents or foreign visa holders — and their port of entry. Almost a quarter of the nearly 47,000 searches of electronic devices conducted at U.S. borders in the last financial year were of U.S. citizens, according to CBP data.
Hussain advised legal permanent residents, or green card holders, “who may have a bit of a complicated situation” to consult an attorney before traveling.
Visa holders who refuse a search of their devices could see their visas revoked and be barred from entering the U.S., she added.
Rules can vary across the country because the courts have largely avoided ruling on electronic device searches. Last year, a federal judge in New York barred CBP from warrantless searches of people’s phones, but that applies only to John F. Kennedy International Airport.
That lack of consistency, Hussain said, is “really why we believe that the Supreme Court needs to weigh in on this issue.”
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