Previous threads we've done: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts.
I work for an American company and I am based in Europe. I visit the US for work every now and then. I heard a lot of horror stories regarding border entries. If I am ever in a situation where the border police asks for access to my personal phone and pin code, what are my options? Can I refuse and what happens then?
Peter might have good insights on whether the relevant case law has changed since 2017 though.
https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/edd-ean-eng.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/18/returning-trav...
Progressive utopias indeed
Sources: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encounter...
https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/know-your-r...
Of course, if you just don’t want anyone with intelligence or dignity to visit the country, this is great policy.
They can immediately arrest you, however.
> You are within your rights to say no
Given that you don't have a right to enter, if you say no (which you are within your rights to do), and you are denied entry, then nothing wrong has happened.
If you believe that they shouldn't make entry conditional on something, then you are asserting a right to enter. That's what "right" means.
That doesn't sound relevant.
Nobody said that they were obliged to admit you, they complained that the reasons for declining admittance were unfair. Unless you think "no obligation to admit" means carte blanche to decline for any reason, and to treat you however they like?
If so, then that is unreasonable. It is a much stronger condition than "I don't have to let you in".
We're talking about a non-citizen on a visitor visa and there is just simply no legal right to enter if the port of entry official don't like their answers or behavior. They can't say "you have to let me in, it's my right".
If someone comes up to me and asks for food, I am not obliged to give it to them.
If I say to them, "I will give you food, on the condition that I can punch you in the face", and they decline to be punched in the face, do you really believe "nothing wrong has happened"? That I, applying an unethical condition, did nothing wrong?
If someone else says "You must not make punching someone in the face a precondition of giving them food", does that create a "right to food"? Of course not.
It is exactly the same as "I don't have to let you in".
For example, I do not have an obligation to let people into my house. I can choose to let them in or decline them entry. But there are certain preconditions I cannot apply. I cannot, for example, say "you may come into my house only if you murder my neighbour". That's because I'm legally bound not to induce people to commit murder. It would obviously be disingenuous to say this means I have an "obligation to admit" them.
It's the same with immigration. They actually are legally bound in certain ways - an immigration official can't assault you for instance. It's not hard to imagine them being legally bound not to search people's phones. That doesn't mean "they have to admit people".
Your analogy does seem workable, though - let's examine:
> If someone comes up to me and asks for food, I am not obliged to give it to them.
Yes! 100% agree. They probably have a right to ask for food in countries that protect free speech, but they have no right to have requests fulfilled.
> If I say to them, "I will give you food, on the condition that I can punch you in the face", and they decline to be punched in the face,
Sounds great. You have the right to say no. You did say no basically, but you did make a counteroffer. (This is arguably also especially true due to free speech, though that's unrelated to our points.) Your exact counteroffer doesn't seem relevant to me, it could also just be that you'll give it for $50, or $1,000,000 and nothing changes.
He thinks it's a bad offer and gets none of your food.
> "nothing wrong has happened"?
I do think nothing wrong has happened! Is it only because you used food, which a necessity, that you think it's wrong? What if it's a PS5? Would this be ok if the asker is seeking a free PS5? Visiting a foreign country is much more like a PS5 than it is a potato.
> If someone else says "You must not make punching someone in the face a precondition of giving them food", does that create a "right to food"? Of course not.
That is the worst policy I could imagine since it's vague and undefined. Can one ask for a kick to the groin? An elbow to the funny bone? If you did the policymaker's job correctly you'd need to make the policy like "No one may deny a request for food/PS5s" -- that exactly creates a right to food/PS5s. Or you could make the policy "No one may deny a request for food/PS5s but one may require compensation, which may only be less than $50 in US Currency. Compensation in the form of a service or a trade may not be required."
That creates a right to pay $50 or less for food/PS5s.
So your "burner phone" needs to be your primary phone, which is something that is hard to go back in time to fix.
I actually expected to leave and have my right to come back not dependent on GC status (which expires after 6 months), but due to family have stayed so far. by the by - I'm a citizen of that dangerous country bordering the US - Canada.
The whole reason we have those types of employment and public accommodation laws is a special case though. In terms of employment, we prefer this to a world where black people or women can't get jobs, because jobs are necessary, or can't enter half the establishments because people witnessed that Jim Crow was a shitty and shameful situation. And I do stipulate that that doesn't mean the same as "all women have the right to a job at my company upon demand."
But why don't we also have laws criminalizing things like refusing to be friends with $SKIN_COLOR people? I think it's because it's only in those specific realms like employment and public accommodation where we have created rights. The right to shop in a place that is open to the general public is a right Black people got from a law. And the right of people to be considered for a job without regard to their membership in certain protected classes is something the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 created. There is no right of foreigners without a green card to enter in the first place - CBP can completely legally say no to anyone, so no 'counteroffer' of conditional admittance could be inappropriate. The only exception I can think of is misconduct of the officer, e.g. 'I'll admit you if you give me $10,000' or a more unsavory favor. But with that already being illegal, I don't think it is too relevant here.
Yes, of course nothing wrong has happened. The other party decided that the food was not worth a punch in the face. The other party is no worse off than if you had made no offer. The other party is no worse off than if you had responded to "may I have some food please" with "no".
Downthread:
> It is routine and unproblematic for laws to exist that prohibit "you can't enter this bar if you're black" or "I won't hire you because you're a woman".
This is completely irrelevant. "I will give you food, on the condition that you change your immutable characteristics" is incoherent. "You can't enter the country because you didn't submit to this violation of your privacy" is a) targeted at someone who definitionally doesn't have those constitutional protections in the US and b) not an expression of any kind of identity-group prejudice.
Not just that, at least in my understanding of American political theory. It's because of the existing right to freedom of association. If it is criminal to refuse association, that association becomes compulsory, and thus not free.
That doesn't mean they can't deny you entry. It means you might win a court case some day.
ICE cannot legally arrest people who are citizens for no reason, and yet they have done exactly that 30% of the time by their own admission.
"Knowing your rights" is meaningless if the public chooses to vote for people who don't care about those rights, and celebrate when you do not get your rights.
It doesn't matter what the paper says, it matters what CBP feels like doing, and what their management lets them get away with. The constitution is just a magic circle we all agree to play in, and isn't real if enough people disregard it.
If the border agent doesn't want you to come into the country, you are fucked. Nobody's job is to get between that agent and you and ensure the border agent follows the law on the paper, and the border agent will not go to jail or even lose their job for completely ignoring the law.
If you're on American soil they can just detain you. Or worse.
If you ever want nightmares, read the story of Maher Arar.
You are seriously inconvenienced, but assuming your paperwork is in order, you will be allowed into the US. This isn't just against US law, it's a violation of international law to render a person stateless.
This ignores the real point, which is that while you cannot be refused entry to the United States, you can be arrested at the border. ICE these days has mastered the art of making people's detainment so uncomfortable that even those with a right to be in this country end up deciding to leave.
Where are you getting that statistic (honest question)?
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/12/05/despite-medias-claims-ic...
Why would ICE leave the number as low as "70%" if they could be higher? Every illegal alien is a criminal as far as the law is concerned. Every illegal alien arrested is "charged with a crime". Otherwise ICE is openly stating to its supporters that they arrest illegal aliens and then release them, something their supporters are vocally against, and the administration believes and claims to be a serious problem.
Meanwhile, the Cato Institute a libertarian think tank, claims they have been leaked far worse data https://www.cato.org/blog/5-ice-detainees-have-violent-convi...
A direct reading of ICE's claims (that seem to be contrary to information obtained through FOIA?) is that 70% of the people they arrest are criminals, which by their own definitions, would imply 30% of the people they arrest are not illegally here, but that's reading between the lines and it's hard to lend any credence to anything said by an administration that treats public statements as a fun gaslighting game.
But essentially, if ICE COULD claim everyone they arrest is an illegal alien (and literally a criminal they are legally allowed to arrest and deport), why wouldn't they?
Flag my claim if appropriate.
> 70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens charged with or convicted of crimes in the U.S.
I believe the claim here is that 70% of the people ICE arrests have been charged with or convicted of crimes other than being present in the USA illegally. I don't think this is at all meant to imply that 30% of arrests are of people who are present in the USA legally. I think it's just sloppy writing.
isn't the right move here: wipe your phone, travel to destination, then restore from cloud backup? in the middle, you can let them inspect your wiped phone.
Of course I can say that. I can say "you can't come into my house if you're black" too. The point is that it's unethical. It would be unethical for me to search your phone before you entered my house, too. This is not complicated, I'm not sure why you're having trouble understanding it.
This is a very strange failure of reading comprehension. I think you're trying to write "I will only give you food if you're white." Are you trying to say this sentence is incoherent? I admit that if you say this sentence to a black person, it is logically equivalent to "I will give you food if you change your immutable characteristics". But they are not logically equivalent in general, so your gotcha doesn't apply to my argument.
About your actual argument: a) it is obvious they don't have constitutional protections, I am not arguing about the law, this is an ethical point; b) identity-group prejudice is not the only kind of unethical behaviour. Since you mention prejudice, I think you proved my point - if the ethical standard was "nobody is materially worse off" then this kind of prejudice would just be irrelevant. If the US had a "whites only" immigration policy that would be A-OK with you, they have no obligation to let people in. If that's your ethical standard, I have nothing more to say.
> why don't we also have laws criminalizing things like refusing to be friends with $SKIN_COLOR people?
Some combination of "it would be impossible to enforce" and "laws about who can be friends with who sounds kind of crazy".
> There is no right of foreigners without a green card to enter in the first place
There is no right of black people (or any people) to get a job, either. It simply does not follow that "no counteroffer ... could be inappropriate". This is sort of my point - all the law says is "if you would offer this job to person X, only on the condition that they were white rather than black, then you must offer them the job anyway". Please note that I am not arguing about what the law says - I am arguing that the law is unethical.
Now, you say getting a job is somehow more "necessary" than, say, being friends with someone. I would argue also it's more "objective" in the sense that a job is a job, it would be silly for someone to try to argue "well, I can choose not to be friends with black people, so why can't I choose not to hire them?". This would be disingenuous - hiring people is not similar to being friends with them. So, given you agree this kind of law is ok for jobs and not ok for people's friendships, which one do you think is more similar to immigration?
Wipe it, let them inspect it, sell it, and buy a new one.
Good luck getting anyone close to this to go on the record about it though given such things normally come with corporate or government gag orders.
There are hundreds of privileged vendor binary blobs on most flagship devices not even Google gets source code to though so supply chain attacks should be assumed.
The United States does have some rides about what border agents can and can not do. They can not sucker punch you, for example. They can request to see the contents of your phone and if you refuse they can choose to refuse you admittance into the country.
It’s not a question of fairness.
For what it’s worth I’m very much in favor of immigration and people visiting the United States, but this country and all others have the right to admit or not admit whomever they choose.
Sure, the NSA can probably pull this off. Thing is, the NSA probably does not need to do this at immigration.
I seriously doubt that this is a realistic problem if your threat model is anything less than "The NSA is very interested in me". In that case I don't see how you could trust any phone, regardless of it having been in the hands of border officials or not.
1) only bring burner devices
2) have your devices travel separately using some courier service
Yeah, they can still request your social media profiles and whatnot. You are not particularly likely to be denied entry because you don't have your normal devices with you, this is not very uncommon these days.
Of course it's better to be able to say that your employer requires you to do this, so it's probably good to ask your boss to write up such a policy. Otherwise "why?" could be a pretty uncomfortable question.
People with no social media presence at all have been denied entry.
In short, an unfortunately very wide field of people for ICE to chew through without touching any citizens (even if one takes the most uncharitable interpretation, i.e. only 70% of arrests have been of unlawfully present individuals)
No. I am exactly pointing out why your example, which would be analogous to "I will only give you food if you're white", is not comparable to "I will give you food, on the condition that I can punch you in the face".
Anyway, you are still missing the point. You cannot cause harm to someone by offering a bad option. These are not the same kind of statement. The race-based one is not an offer. It does not involve any possibility of food being given to the black person, because the black person cannot become white. It is not comparable to the offer to be punched in the face, because the offer to be punched in the face is an offer.
> If that's your ethical standard, I have nothing more to say.
The failure of reading comprehension is yours.
This is not an example of "being offered something unreasonable, being given free reign to decline the offer".
> You just don't care about this particular harm.
This is both incorrect and insulting.
This is obviously a general statement about any nation, comparing the US to its peers.
In the context of the conversation it is clearly an argument that “we don’t have to let you in, we can require whatever we want, including trampling on your rights as an individual”, which is unamerican.
As the other commenter wrote, ICE is saying that 70% of arrests have a criminal conviction, implying something other than just being in the country illegally. First, many illegal aliens (e.g. those who overstay their visas) have not committed any criminal offense - overstaying a visa is a civil charge.
Yes, I do admit there is wiggle room for ICE to make it sound like all the people they are arresting are rapists and murderers (crossing the border illegally is itself a criminal offense), and as you point out, the Cato institute and many others have pointed out that high percentages of those deported don't have other criminal convictions. And given how much wide reporting there's been about how the administration is dissatisfied with the pace of deportations, it's clear there is pressure and incentive for ICE to deport as many people as possible.
So you can make all those valid arguments. Falsely stating (i.e. "making up" or "lying") that 30% of ICE arrests are citizens with no convictions doesn't help your point.
“Rights” aren’t the point. I have a right to refuse entry to a police officer without a warrant, but if an officer puts me in the position of having to explicitly exercise that right, we should be disappointed in them and their chief, not me.
I can no longer modify, retract, edit, etc my comment. This statement is almost certainly false, and I made it without due diligence to confirm I remembered the wording of a claim ICE made.
We know ICE has arrested some people who are American citizens, but we do not have anything near enough good data to make anything close to the claim I made.
This is a record of my error. Remember this if you see my comments again.
Doesn't matter. I made a claim without double checking something I should have, or adding nuance or fleshing out my claim. I made a false claim.