A recent string of legal U.S. residents being detained or deported following information found on their cell phones is worrying some travelers they’ll be stopped when traveling through the country’s border.
Earlier this month, Lebanese physician and assistant professor at Brown University Rasha Alawieh was flagged at Boston Logan International Airport by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. She was returning from visiting family back home when officers found photos and videos on her cell phone pertaining to Hezbollah. Her visa was canceled, and she’s been deported back to Lebanon.
While not at the border, an Indian Columbia PhD student’s visa was revoked, and she self-deported to Canada after ICE raided her apartment for pro-Palestinian activity on her social media and participating in campus protests. Fellow student Mahmoud Khalil was a protest leader and is being held in immigration detention in Louisiana in what some Democratic Senators are calling an abuse of immigration laws. Most recently, a Georgetown University researcher from India who was recently accused of having connections to a Palestinian militant group is also facing deportation.
Under orders by the Trump administration to increase national security – including a full review of visa programs by the U.S. State Department and a potential travel ban on more than 40 countries – more travelers are facing scrutiny by immigration and border control officers, including a search through your electronic devices by CBP.
Up until this past January, these searches have been “almost negligible,” according to Susanne Heubel, senior counsel at New York-based immigration law firm Harter Secrest & Emery LLP. “I travel a lot, I have clients who travel a lot, of all sorts of nationalities and visa statuses, and nobody has ever complained about these searches until now,” she said.