A U.S. federal appeals court has stripped away the last legal requirement that border officers need any reason at all to search a traveller’s phone, laptop or tablet, and immigration lawyers say Canadians crossing south should assume their devices are fair game.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Sept. 17 that border officers do not need “reasonable suspicion of a law violation or a national security concern” before conducting an advanced search of an electronic device, a power that had been curtailed by lower courts for years. The case involved Chinwendu Alisigwe, a permanent U.S. resident whose phone was searched at JFK Airport in New York. “Under our precedents, no suspicion is required before the government searches a traveller’s property at the border,” the court wrote, according to CTV News and CP24.
Toronto immigration lawyer Joel Sandaluk told CTV News the ruling confirms what U.S. Customs and Border Protection had already signalled earlier this year, that officers have broad latitude to look through “any tiny corner of the phone they want to,” from text messages and emails to social media accounts, without first justifying the search. Washington state immigration lawyer Leonard Saunders added that refusing to hand over a password can get a device marked “uninspectable,” a designation that can lead to entry being denied outright, though outright seizures remain rare.
What the wire coverage of the ruling has largely left out is how differently Canada treats the same question at its own ports of entry, a gap that matters given how often people cross in both directions. The Canada Border Services Agency cannot search a traveller’s phone on a whim. Following the Alberta Court of Appeal’s 2020 decision in R. v. Canfield, which found unrestricted device searches under the Customs Act unconstitutional, Parliament passed Bill S-7 to write a “reasonable general concern” standard into law for CBSA officers examining digital devices. It is a low bar, but it is still a bar, and it is one American officers no longer have to clear. A Canadian heading into the U.S. now has fewer protections for the contents of their phone than a foreign visitor has heading into Canada.
That asymmetry lands at a moment when cross-border travel is actually rebounding. Statistics Canada figures released in August show Canadian residents made 2.3 million return trips from the United States in June, up five per cent from a year earlier, with car trips climbing 7.6 per cent. Those numbers are still running about a quarter below pre-tariff-dispute levels from 2024, but after 15 straight months of declines, more Canadians are again choosing to drive or fly south, many with the same phone in their pocket that holds their banking apps, work email and photos.
Global Affairs Canada’s travel advisory for the United States has separately been updated to flag the risk, telling travellers to expect scrutiny at ports of entry, including of electronic devices, and to comply with border officers’ instructions, according to CBC News. Sandaluk’s advice echoes that official caution: “Honesty is the best policy,” he said, adding that a traveller’s device “may be examined just as easily as your suitcase.” Lawyers on both sides of the border are steering clear of recommending deception, such as wiping a phone before a trip, warning that appearing evasive can itself trigger more scrutiny. The more common advice is to log out of sensitive apps, lean on cloud backups instead of local storage, and leave a work laptop at home if it is not needed for the trip.
Customs and Border Protection reported 55,424 device searches out of 419 million international arrivals in 2025, a small fraction of all crossings. But the Second Circuit’s ruling applies only within its own jurisdiction for now, covering New York, Connecticut and Vermont, including major crossing points and JFK, one of the busiest gateways for Canadian travellers. Other circuits have not gone as far, leaving a patchwork of protections that legal experts say is unlikely to resolve until a case like Alisigwe’s reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.
Via CP24/CTV News, with additional reporting from Statistics Canada and court records from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
