What happens when your phone is seized at the airport?

Even if you didn't do anything wrong, handing your phone over to the police would never be a good idea. But international passengers at United States airports often have no choice — even if they are United States citizens.

What happens when your phone is confiscated at the airport?

A woman's mobile phone was confiscated by the CBP and is currently being prosecuted for the return of her cell phone.

A woman's mobile phone was confiscated by the CBP and is currently being prosecuted for the return of her cell phone.

After returning from a three-week trip to Europe in late April, Janet Zahia Corcelius, a Minnesotan labour worker, was detained and interrogated by Minneapolis-San Luis customs officers. Paul International Airport. Prior to her release, agents searched her luggage twice, confiscated her political books purchased abroad and confiscated her mobile phone, which had not yet been returned, according to a petition filed by the Federal Court of Minnesota.

Is it constitutional for Customs and Border Protection to confiscate your mobile phone and keep it? The American Islamic Relations Commission, which sued the Government on behalf of Cosselius, does not believe so. The civil rights organization claimed that she was targeted for her opposition to the ICE raid in Minneapolis. Corcelius filed an action against the Department of Homeland Security claiming that the confiscation of her mobile phone violated the Fourth Amendment and the CBP ' s own regulations on search and seizure.

But the problem is not just by telephone. According to CAIR, CBP is conducting a “systemic” search” of activists' equipment, using anti-terrorist language and tools to target left-wing critics and activists, consistent with President Donald Trump's efforts to pursue what he calls “violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists”.

According to the complaint, Kosselius called her lawyer after being pulled to the side for questioning. She gave her mobile phone to the duty manager of the United States Customs and Border Protection Agency so that they could talk to her lawyer. She was then told that her phone had been confiscated. Her other property was searched by agents of the United States Customs Border Protection Agency and the Homeland Security Investigation Agency, a division of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service, which focused on international crime, drug trafficking and national security threats.

CBP can conduct two types of searches of people ' s mobile phones and other devices at the border: basic checks, which they can only look at when they are in flight mode; and advanced forensic searches, which connect them to external devices, allowing them to check and possibly copy their contents. Even if U.S. citizens refuse mobile phone searches, they cannot prevent them from re-entering the U.S., but their mobile phones may be confiscated - Cellular content can also be searched if agents attempt to manually unlock a mobile phone through biometrics or by using tools manufactured by an Israeli company, such as Cellebrite, which can unlock the cell phone and extract cell phone data. CBP did not respond in time to The Verge ' s request for comment for publication.

Immigration, tourists and other non-citizens have been deported or refused entry into the United States after mobile phone searches by the United States Customs Border Service since Trump returned to his office, including in one case by customs officers and allegedly “violent interrogations”. The mobile phones of some activists were confiscated at the border, including members of convoys providing humanitarian assistance to Cuba in response to the ongoing United States embargo against Cuba.

The number of CBP telephone searches remains relatively low, but the number is increasing. It carried out 55,318 searches of mobile phones and other electronic devices in the 2025 fiscal year, up from 41,767 in 2023, an increase of 32 per cent.

However, according to the complaint by CAIR, a person's property may be confiscated at the port of entry only if there are “reasonable grounds to believe that any law or regulation implemented by Customs or Border Protection or Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been violated”. However, there is an exception to this rule: “National security considerations”.

Following the assassination of Conservative activist Charlie Kirk last September, Trump issued an executive order designating “Antifa” as a terrorist organization, although it is not a real organization. Trump also issued a presidential memorandum calling for “a new law enforcement strategy to investigate all those involved in these criminal and terrorist schemes”. Presidential Adviser Stephen Miller described this as “a whole-of-government approach to the elimination of left-wing terrorism”. By linking Kirk's murderers to the so-called “anti-fascist terrorists” and obfuscating all opponents as so-called terrorists, the Government has provided itself with cover for the harassment and intimidation of anyone who might criticize the Government.

In January of the following year, the Government described the widespread boycott of the ICE ' s brutal raid on the Twin Cities as an organized conspiracy and announced that the FBI was investigating the Minnesotan tracking and organizing a signal chat against ICE. Miller called Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and a “potential assassin”, one of two agents of the Department of Homeland Security killed in Minneapolis.

Cosselius is one of the Minnesotans who opposed ICE into the Twin Cities. The indictment stated that, in addition to organizing activities, she had shared in social media information about the Minneapolis City Council resolution, which encouraged European institutions to withdraw funds from companies under contract with the Department of Homeland Security.

“These rules, which seek to incorporate terrorism into domestic policy discussions, are exactly what we have long feared,” told The Verge on behalf of Corcelius' CAIR lawyer, John Fossum. “The domestic use of these types of terrorist designations enables the Government to intervene in the security apparatus of the State and allows them to search, seize and target the target population in a manner not permitted under domestic law.”

Corcelius requested the Federal Court to order CBP to stop any advanced search of her mobile phone, remove any information gathered during the search and return her mobile phone and other items. She also asked the court to prohibit the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out unconventional searches of her property in the future and to change its policy on unconventional telephone searches.

Even if the court were to be in the interest of Caselias, it would not necessarily prevent future U.S. Customs and Border Protection from targeting activists. In 2024, a federal judge in New York ruled that CBP could not search a passenger's mobile phone without a search warrant, but that decision applied only to the East District of New York, including John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens. However, in 2021, a United States court of appeal ruled that CBP agents could search the traveller ' s equipment without a search warrant. As a result, national legislation has been put together. In some jurisdictions, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can conduct basic, uncertified inspections, but not forensic. In other cases, the CBP can do whatever it wants. Similarly, any decision in the Cosselius case may ultimately apply only to Minnesota.

At the time of writing, she had not returned her mobile phone.