On September 17, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held in United States v. Alisigwe that the government needs neither a warrant nor any level of suspicion to manually search a traveler’s cellphone at the border, and it rejected four district court decisions within the circuit that had required a warrant. The ruling follows CBP’s replacement of its 2018 electronic device search policy with Directive 3340-049B, effective January 1, 2026. Business travelers, in-house counsel, and companies whose employees carry client, pricing, or technical data through ports of entry in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont should revisit their travel practices now. 

Key Takeaways 

• The Second Circuit held that a manual search of a cellphone at the border is a routine search that requires no warrant and no suspicion, and that the First Amendment imposes no separate warrant requirement. 
• The court expressly left open whether a forensic search, such as an off-site extraction of a phone’s data, requires reasonable suspicion. 
• CBP Directive 3340-049B permits basic searches with or without suspicion and limits advanced (equipment-assisted) searches to cases involving reasonable suspicion or a national security concern, with supervisory approval. 
• Under the directive, officers may not intentionally use a device to access information stored solely in the cloud, and a device that […]