U.S. Citizen Detained by CBP Sues Agency Over Warrantless Device Search

A naturalized U.S. citizen sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over what his attorneys say are unconstitutional policies allowing immigration enforcement agents to conduct warrantless searches of electronic devices at ports of entry.

Wilmer Chavarria, a naturalized citizen originally from Nicaragua and the superintendent of a Vermont school district, says he was detained for hours in July by Customs and Border Protection at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. Chavarria says CBP agents repeatedly pressured him to turn over his devices, which he refused to do at first to maintain the privacy of student data on his phone and laptop.

“I verbally asserted my rights as a U.S. citizen and requested a lawyer or a phone call, all of which were denied,” he told Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday during an event to highlight detention of U.S. citizens. “I was told that I have no constitutional rights at a port of entry and that I should be grateful that they were even bothering to ask me nicely.”

In a 15-page complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Chavarria’s attorneys argue CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s authority to search U.S. citizens’ electronics is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.

“The government is forcing Americans to decide between traveling without their cellphones or surrendering their constitutional rights whenever they travel internationally,” Amy Peikoff, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation who is working on the case, said in a statement. “Customs and Border Patrol employees cannot claim the power to trample on your rights as a citizen simply because you’re within a certain distance of the border.”

U.S. citizens have increasingly been targeted as the Trump administration widens its net of immigration enforcement. Immigration agents have held at least 170 citizens, according to a ProPublica investigation, but the number of instances is hard to ascertain because the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t track them.

“Our nation stands for justice for all, and anybody who breaks the laws or violates the Constitution should be held accountable regardless of what agency they work for,” Chavarria said on Tuesday.

CBP can subject any traveler to inspection of their electronics, although the agency says its agents searched the devices of less than .01% of international travelers in the 2025 fiscal year.

“These searches have been used to identify and combat terrorist activity, child pornography, drug smuggling, human smuggling, bulk cash smuggling, human trafficking, export control violations, intellectual property rights violations and visa fraud, among other violations,” an agency website explaining the searches states.

The number of electronic device searches at ports of entry has increased from 8,500 in 2015 to more than 46,000 in 2024, according to an analysis of CBP data from the Pacific Legal Foundation.

The Department of Justice declined to comment, and the Department of Homeland Security and CBP did not respond immediately to a request for comment.