Border agents are randomly seizing phones of US citizens who support Palestine

Florida lawyer Jalal Shehadeh is convinced that the warrantless seizure of his cell phone by federal agents at the Newark International Airport after he returned from Palestine this September was not random.

Shehadeh, a Miami-based attorney and Palestinian rights advocate, was held for several hours for a secondary inspection and had his phone seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after he refused to allow federal agents to search it.

“It’s just a wildly invasive thing to do to somebody with no individualized justifiable basis to do it,” Shehadeh told Truthout.

He suspects federal authorities targeted him for his activism. The lawyer is involved in a legal complaint against a federal judge in Florida over the judge’s anti-Palestinian statements.

Shehadeh is one of several Palestinian rights advocates who have been detained and had their personal devices searched by CBP while returning to the U.S. from international travel since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.

Other similar cases include Amir Makled, a lawyer from the Detroit area who was representing University of Michigan students involved in pro-Palestine activism, journalist Max Blumenthal, and Osama Abu Irshaid, the executive director of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).

Jenin Younes, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which filed a legal motion earlier this week demanding the return of Shehadeh’s phone, said CBP appears to be escalating phone searches against opponents of President Donald Trump’s agenda.

“Common sense tells us that they are targeting people who have pro-Palestine views,” Younes told Truthout.

She stressed that the searches are illegal. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects “persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Younes said the “border exception” that allows searches to ensure that no illegal items are brought into the country should not apply to phones.

Younes, a civil liberties attorney, said the authors of the Constitution would have certainly opposed giving the government blanket authority to search people’s phones without cause.

“Law enforcement can search shipping vessels coming into the Boston harbor to make sure that they don’t have contraband. That’s a totally different thing from searching the contents of people’s smartphones,” she said. “I don’t think the framers would have thought that you could read the papers of somebody coming into the country in their suitcase, and likewise, a smartphone, which has so much more personal information.”

The case of Shehadeh and other Palestinian rights supporters targeted for searches at the border has reignited the debate over the application of constitutional protections at ports of entry.

Shehadeh said that when he was stopped at Newark on September 17, CBP officers only conducted a “cursory” search on his bags because they did not appear to be interested in physical items.

“They are looking for our thoughts,” he said. “They’re looking to see what I’m thinking. They want to see who I’m messaging. They want to see what WhatsApp groups I am part of.”

The lawyer, who has Global Entry for expedited border crossing, said he was flagged by name for secondary inspection and led to a waiting room. He was asked general questions about his travels, work, and family before the agents asked to search his phone.

Shehadeh objected to allowing the officers to go through his device, citing the attorney-client privileged information on the phone. The agents kept him waiting and subjected him to another round of questioning as they took the case to a supervisor. As the clock ticked, the Florida-based lawyer missed his connecting flight to Miami.

Eventually, he was informed by an officer that CBP would take his phone and let him go. “I told them, ‘I just want to be very clear. I am not giving you permission, consent to search my phone, and I’m not giving any other arm of this agency or anybody else consent to search my phone,’” he said.

The cell phone still has not been returned.

Shehadeh told Truthout that if the goal of the episode were to deter his activism for Palestinian rights, it would not succeed.

“It will not move our advocacy work an inch. Literally, it will have no impact. If anything, it will fuel the importance of doing more of this work,” he told Truthout. “But when it comes to travel, I’m going to be much more careful about what my phone situation will be.”

The Trump administration has been cracking down on Palestinian rights activism, including through a deportation campaign targeting non-citizen students who participated in protests against the war on Gaza.

Shehadeh warned that the administration is creating a new norm of weakened constitutional rights that many people may take for granted.

“This search is a perfect example of that. Protection against search and seizure is one of those things that comes out of our Constitution that really empowers citizens to know you will not have government intrusion,” he said.

“What this administration is doing is chipping away at the rights of Americans — of all Americans. But sadly, Arabs, Muslims, and minorities tend to be the first victims of these abuses. But they’re certainly not going to be the last ones.”

Abu Irshaid of AMP said the government is turning border crossings into a “hunting ground for individuals it wishes to target” for political retaliation or to gather information about constitutional protected activity.

Abu Irshaid has sued the government, alleging that the repeated searches he has been subjected to at the airport, along with the seizure of his phone, amount to illegal discrimination.

A federal judge ruled in his favor in July, declaring that the government violated Abu Irshaid’s rights with the searches.

Some activists are pinning their hopes on a case before the Supreme Court, Anibowei v. Blanche, that could determine whether the Fourth Amendment applies to the electronic devices of U.S. citizens travelling internationally.

CBP argues that only a tiny fraction of travelers, less than one-half of one percent, are subjected to a device search. But official statistics show an uptick in such searches since Trump returned to the White House.

In 2024, federal officers inspected the devices of 47,047 travelers. The numbers increased to 55,318 last year. Of those inspections, 13,590 targeted U.S. citizens in 2025, compared to 10,541 a year earlier.

In January, CBP released a memorandum outlining its regulations and authorities around searching travelers’ personal devices. The document stressed that people at ports of entry have diminished privacy rights and that phone searches are essential “to identify and combat a wide range of illicit activities.”

A basic search, one where the officer goes through the phone manually, can be conducted “with or without suspicion.”

The bar is higher for carrying out an advanced search, which includes copying and analyzing the content of the phone through an external device. It requires “reasonable suspicion of activity in violation of the laws” enforced by CBP. But there appears to be a loophole. An advanced search can still be conducted “in the absence of individualized reasonable suspicion when there is a national security concern.”

The directive does not provide details on what constitutes a “national security concern” to enable an advanced search.

Officers can only search the device itself and may not access information stored remotely. That’s why they must disable the external connectivity of the phone, according to the memorandum.

The directive gives officers the authority to seize a device and keep it even after the traveler leaves the airport, which is what happened to Shehadeh. According to the memorandum, CBP could effectively keep his phone indefinitely. The agency is allowed to hold on to the device for a period of five days, which can be extended by 15 days and subsequently by seven days in increments without specified limits.

As of Thursday, CBP has kept Shehadeh’s phone for 14 days, meaning the agency has applied at least one extension to its hold on the device.

In response to Truthout’s request for comment, a CBP spokesperson told Truthout that the likelihood of a search at a port of entry “remains exceedingly rare” but did not answer specific questions about Shehadeh’s case, including why the agency is still holding on to his phone.

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection has statutory authority to conduct border searches of electronic devices for all persons entering or departing the United States, regardless of citizenship, to enforce laws addressing terrorism, child exploitation, drug- and human-smuggling, visa fraud, and national security threats,” the CBP spokesperson said.

In the face of the U.S.’s ever-expanding definition of “national security threats,” which now seem to include lawyers, journalists, and activists who have advocated for the rights of Palestinians, are now living in fear that border stops are being used as a form of intimidation.

“What is most disturbing is that many of these aggressive government actions target activists whose only ‘offense’ is criticizing Israel’s violations against Palestinians,” Abu Irshaid told Truthout in a statement.

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A Personal Connection

As a reporter, I try to stay out of the stories I am telling. But my personal experience with being stopped and searched after returning to the U.S. from international travel is too relevant for this article to withhold.

After returning to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. from a trip to Lebanon in February 2025, I was detained for nearly five hours and faced similar treatment as Shehadeh.

CBP officers asked me intrusive questions relating to my work as a journalist and political leanings in my family’s hometown in Lebanon, which had been targeted by Israeli bombardment in the war.

After a brief search of my bags, a CBP officer asked me to hand my phone and unlock it. I initially refused. The federal agent handed me a piece of paper stating that CBP has the lawful ability to search electronic devices. When I highlighted that the flyer reflects CBP policy, not the Constitution, the officer threatened to seize both my phone and computer indefinitely if I didn’t hand the phone in.

CBP took the phone after pressuring me to write down its passcode and kept me waiting for around two hours before handing it back — with a disclaimer that they couldn’t “process” it because the system was down. They eventually let me go. Throughout the hours-long ordeal, the officers did not allow me to contact my family member who was waiting to pick me up at the airport.

I have traveled outside the country twice since then and have been flagged for secondary inspection on the way back each time, albeit without a device search. At the advice of press freedom experts, now I travel internationally with an alternative phone that does not contain sensitive personal or professional information.