If you're on American soil they can just detain you. Or worse.
If you ever want nightmares, read the story of Maher Arar.
isn't the right move here: wipe your phone, travel to destination, then restore from cloud backup? in the middle, you can let them inspect your wiped phone.
Wipe it, let them inspect it, sell it, and buy a new one.
Good luck getting anyone close to this to go on the record about it though given such things normally come with corporate or government gag orders.
There are hundreds of privileged vendor binary blobs on most flagship devices not even Google gets source code to though so supply chain attacks should be assumed.
Sure, the NSA can probably pull this off. Thing is, the NSA probably does not need to do this at immigration.
I seriously doubt that this is a realistic problem if your threat model is anything less than "The NSA is very interested in me". In that case I don't see how you could trust any phone, regardless of it having been in the hands of border officials or not.
Sources: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encounter...
https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/know-your-rights/know-your-r...
That doesn't mean they can't deny you entry. It means you might win a court case some day.
ICE cannot legally arrest people who are citizens for no reason, and yet they have done exactly that 30% of the time by their own admission.
"Knowing your rights" is meaningless if the public chooses to vote for people who don't care about those rights, and celebrate when you do not get your rights.
It doesn't matter what the paper says, it matters what CBP feels like doing, and what their management lets them get away with. The constitution is just a magic circle we all agree to play in, and isn't real if enough people disregard it.
If the border agent doesn't want you to come into the country, you are fucked. Nobody's job is to get between that agent and you and ensure the border agent follows the law on the paper, and the border agent will not go to jail or even lose their job for completely ignoring the law.
You are seriously inconvenienced, but assuming your paperwork is in order, you will be allowed into the US. This isn't just against US law, it's a violation of international law to render a person stateless.
This ignores the real point, which is that while you cannot be refused entry to the United States, you can be arrested at the border. ICE these days has mastered the art of making people's detainment so uncomfortable that even those with a right to be in this country end up deciding to leave.
Where are you getting that statistic (honest question)?
I can no longer modify, retract, edit, etc my comment. This statement is almost certainly false, and I made it without due diligence to confirm I remembered the wording of a claim ICE made.
We know ICE has arrested some people who are American citizens, but we do not have anything near enough good data to make anything close to the claim I made.
This is a record of my error. Remember this if you see my comments again.
They can immediately arrest you, however.
There’s many points you could make about the United States and immigration, but I don’t think this is one of them.
This is obviously a general statement about any nation, comparing the US to its peers.
In the context of the conversation it is clearly an argument that “we don’t have to let you in, we can require whatever we want, including trampling on your rights as an individual”, which is unamerican.
That doesn't sound relevant.
Nobody said that they were obliged to admit you, they complained that the reasons for declining admittance were unfair. Unless you think "no obligation to admit" means carte blanche to decline for any reason, and to treat you however they like?
If so, then that is unreasonable. It is a much stronger condition than "I don't have to let you in".
It is exactly the same as "I don't have to let you in".
I actually expected to leave and have my right to come back not dependent on GC status (which expires after 6 months), but due to family have stayed so far. by the by - I'm a citizen of that dangerous country bordering the US - Canada.
https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/edd-ean-eng.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/18/returning-trav...
Progressive utopias indeed
Of course, if you just don’t want anyone with intelligence or dignity to visit the country, this is great policy.
> You are within your rights to say no
Given that you don't have a right to enter, if you say no (which you are within your rights to do), and you are denied entry, then nothing wrong has happened.
If you believe that they shouldn't make entry conditional on something, then you are asserting a right to enter. That's what "right" means.
We're talking about a non-citizen on a visitor visa and there is just simply no legal right to enter if the port of entry official don't like their answers or behavior. They can't say "you have to let me in, it's my right".
“Rights” aren’t the point. I have a right to refuse entry to a police officer without a warrant, but if an officer puts me in the position of having to explicitly exercise that right, we should be disappointed in them and their chief, not me.
Peter might have good insights on whether the relevant case law has changed since 2017 though.
So your "burner phone" needs to be your primary phone, which is something that is hard to go back in time to fix.
1) only bring burner devices
2) have your devices travel separately using some courier service
Yeah, they can still request your social media profiles and whatnot. You are not particularly likely to be denied entry because you don't have your normal devices with you, this is not very uncommon these days.
Of course it's better to be able to say that your employer requires you to do this, so it's probably good to ask your boss to write up such a policy. Otherwise "why?" could be a pretty uncomfortable question.
I work for an American company and I am based in Europe. I visit the US for work every now and then. I heard a lot of horror stories regarding border entries. If I am ever in a situation where the border police asks for access to my personal phone and pin code, what are my options? Can I refuse and what happens then?