United States v. Alisigwe

24-960 United States v. Alisigwe In the United States Court of Appeals FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT AUGUST TERM 2024 No. 24-960 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Appellee, v. CHINWENDU ALISIGWE, Defendant-Appellant. * On Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ARGUED: MARCH 28, 2025 DECIDED: SEPTEMBER 17, 2026 Before: MENASHI and LEE, Circuit Judges, and GONZALEZ, Judge. † A jury found Chinwendu Alisigwe guilty of fraud offenses based on his use of fraudulent identification documents to open bank * The Clerk of Court is directed to amend the caption as set forth above. †Judge Hector Gonzalez of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation. accounts using the names and social security numbers of real people. Alisigwe argues that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained from two searches of his cellphone at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He argues that the searches violated the Fourth Amendment because the government did not obtain a warrant. We disagree. No suspicion is required before the government searches a traveler’s cellphone at the border. Nor does the First Amendment impose an independent warrant requirement for searches of cellphones at the border. We also reject Alisigwe’s additional arguments that the district court erred by imposing two enhancements under the Sentencing Guidelines: (1) an eighteen-point enhancement under § 2B1.1(b)(1)(J) because the offense involved an intended loss of at least $3,500,000, and (2) a two-point enhancement under § 3C1.1 for obstruction of justice. We affirm the judgment of the district court. Judge Lee concurs in the judgment in a separate opinion. COLLEEN P. CASSIDY, Federal Defenders of New York, Inc., New York, NY, for Defendant-Appellant. JAMES LIGTENBERG, Assistant United States Attorney (Meredith C. Foster, William C. Kinder, Assistant United States Attorneys, on the brief), for Damian Williams, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, New York, NY, for Plaintiff-Appellee. SCOTT B. WILKENS, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University (Stephanie Krent, Alex Abdo, Jameel Jaffer, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; Bruce D. Brown, Gabriel Rottman, Grayson Clary, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, on the brief), for Amici Curiae Knight First 2  Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. MENASHI, Circuit Judge: Chinwendu Alisigwe, a lawful permanent resident, appeals from a judgment of conviction following trial for conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. International law enforcement agencies suspected that Alisigwe used fraudulent passports and identification documents to open bank accounts in the names of real people. In 2019, officers from the New York Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force of Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) and Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) stopped Alisigwe at John F. Kennedy International Airport (“JFK”). During an interview, an officer scrolled through Alisigwe’s cellphone and photographed its contents. The officers found images of other people’s names, birthdates, and social security numbers. Two years later, officers again stopped Alisigwe at JFK. An officer scrolled through Alisigwe’s cellphone and photographed a WhatsApp message in which Alisigwe asked a co-conspirator whether he had received “[a]nything for” an individual whose identity Alisigwe had stolen. App’x 259. The district court denied Alisigwe’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained from his cellphone. In doing so, it concluded that “cellphone searches cannot be conducted without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity because they are not routine border searches.” United States v. Alisigwe, No. 22-CR-425, 2023 WL 8275923, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 30, 2023). But it decided that “[o]n both occasions that law enforcement agents searched a cellphone belonging to 3 Alisigwe, they had reasonable suspicion to do so.” Id. at *6. There was such suspicion, according to the district court, because the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) had “launched an investigation regarding Alisigwe’s use of multiple identities,” the “United Kingdom’s border force had seized a fraudulent South African passport bearing Alisigwe’s photograph, and DHS’s Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force was planning to pursue criminal or administrative charges against Alisigwe.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). The district court noted that other district courts in this circuit have held that a warrant is required to search a suspect’s cellphone at the border. Id. The district court concluded that even if a warrant were required, the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule would apply because “neither the Supreme Court nor the Second Circuit has addressed the lawfulness of warrantless searches of cellphones at the border.” Id. at *7. We do so now. First, we conclude that the district court properly denied Alisigwe’s motion to suppress evidence obtained at the border. Contrary to the district court’s reasoning, however, reasonable suspicion was not required. The “longstanding recognition that searches at our borders without probable cause and without a warrant are nonetheless ‘reasonable’ has a history as old as the Fourth Amendment itself.” United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 619 (1977). “The border-search exception is grounded in the recognized right of the sovereign to control, subject to substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution, who and what may enter the country.” Id. at 620. Because “[t]he Government’s interest in preventing the entry of unwanted persons and effects is at its zenith at the international border,” United States v. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149, 152 (2004), “searches made at the border, pursuant to the long- standing right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and 4 examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border,” Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 616. Under our precedents, no suspicion is required before the government searches a traveler’s property at the border. See United States v. Irving, 452 F.3d 110, 123 (2d Cir. 2006). Searches of property “are made reasonable by that person’s decision to enter this country.” Id. To be sure, nonroutine searches, which are “more invasive searches, like strip searches, require reasonable suspicion.” Id. But we have held that “the label ‘non-routine’ should generally be reserved for intrusive border searches of the person (such as body-cavity searches or strip searches), not belongings.” United States v. Levy, 803 F.3d 120, 123 n.3 (2d Cir. 2015) (emphasis added). Because a cellphone is property, our precedents establish that the government does not need to have reasonable suspicion before searching a traveler’s cellphone at the border. We reject Alisigwe’s invitation to extend Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014), to conclude that a “search of a cellphone requires a warrant, even in circumstances where a warrantless search is generally allowed.” Appellant’s Br. 32. Riley involved the exception to the warrant requirement for a search incident to an arrest. That exception aims to avoid “the two risks” of “harm to officers and destruction of evidence.” Riley, 573 U.S. at 386. In Riley, the Court explained that because “[t]here are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data,” the rationale for the search-incident-to-arrest exception does not have “much force with respect to digital content on cell phones.” Id. That holding does not implicate the border-search exception, which relies on a different rationale. 5  Alisigwe asks us to limit the border-search exception to exclude searches “for evidence of crime unrelated to contraband or other border offenses.” Appellant’s Br. 34. But we have previously held that “the validity of a border search does not depend on whether it is prompted by a criminal investigative motive.” Irving, 452 F.3d at 123. Our precedent holding that the government may perform pretextual searches at the border without a warrant means that the government is not limited to searching for contraband or evidence of border offenses. That is because the government’s interest at the border is not limited to detecting physical contraband. Rather, the government has “broad authority to control who and what enters the country.” Tabbaa v. Chertoff, 509 F.3d 89, 102 n.5 (2d Cir. 2007). Searching for evidence of criminality among those entering the country is an exercise of that authority. Second, we conclude that the First Amendment does not impose a separate limitation on the government’s authority to search cellphones at the border. Special protection against cellphone searches at the border would be both over- and underinclusive of speech: The government would be limited in its authority to search for evidence of non-expressive conduct on cellphones but could freely search for expressive conduct in any other type of property, such as notebooks, diaries, and films. And that novel form of First Amendment protection would conflict with the purpose of the border-search exception because it would prevent the government from thwarting the entry of persons with ties to terrorism. Third, we reject Alisigwe’s arguments that the district court erred by imposing two enhancements under the Sentencing Guidelines: (1) an eighteen-point enhancement under § 2B1.1(b)(1)(J) because the offense involved an intended loss of at least $3,500,000, and (2) a two-point enhancement under § 3C1.1 for obstruction of 6 justice. As Alisigwe concedes in his reply brief, we have held that the loss under § 2B1.1 is the greater of the actual or intended loss. The district court correctly relied on the intended loss to calculate Alisigwe’s sentence. And the district court did not clearly err by finding that Alisigwe willfully and materially obstructed court proceedings by concocting a story during his duress hearing. That finding justified the obstruction enhancement under § 3C1.1. We affirm the judgment of the district court. BACKGROUND Between 2017 and 2020, Alisigwe opened thirty-six bank accounts using fraudulent passports and driver’s licenses. He deposited millions of dollars from other fraudulent schemes into the bank accounts and transferred money among the accounts to disguise the nature of the proceeds. He also wired portions of the stolen funds to accounts in China and the United Kingdom and kept some of the funds for himself. In 2018, the United Kingdom Border Task Force informed DHS that it had seized a fraudulent South African passport with an American nonimmigrant visa in the name of Wilhelm Heintz. See App’x 47. Facial recognition software indicated that the photograph on the passport was of Alisigwe, who had previously filed a naturalization application with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”). As a result, HSI opened a criminal investigation in coordination with USCIS, the HSI Attaché in London, and the U.S. Department of Justice. Alisigwe returned to the United States from a trip to Nigeria in February 2019. He went through the regular customs inspection at JFK before agents from HSI instructed CBP to put him in a secondary inspection area. HSI officers stopped him because they were “looking 7 for evidence of fraudulent financial transactions … and stolen identification information … [o]r documents.” Id. at 260-61. When an officer showed Alisigwe the Heintz passport, Alisigwe said “[t]hat looks like me” but denied knowing when or where the photograph was taken. Id. at 48. An officer instructed Alisigwe to unlock his cellphone, which Alisigwe did. The officer then scrolled through Alisigwe’s cellphone and used his own cellphone to photograph images contained in Alisigwe’s photo gallery. 1 The photo gallery contained images of other people’s names, birthdates, and social security numbers as well as bank account information and addresses. See App’x 457-61. The information in the photo gallery matched the information Alisigwe used to open various bank accounts. After the search, Alisigwe was released into the country. Over two years later, HSI and CBP officers stopped Alisigwe again at JFK as he returned from an international trip. See id. at 273. The officers interviewed Alisigwe about the purpose of his travel and again manually reviewed his cellphone by scrolling through it and taking photographs. See id. at 50-51. The officers photographed a WhatsApp message in which Alisigwe asked an individual whether he had received “[a]nything for” one of the people whose identities Alisigwe had stolen. Id. at 259; see id. at 457. Alisigwe was again released into the country. Alisigwe was subsequently arrested. The government charged him with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. At a 1 The officer did not perform a cell phone extraction, which would have involved connecting Alisigwe’s phone to a computer and downloading information not accessible by scrolling through the phone. See App’x 264. 8 change-of-plea hearing, Alisigwe said that he had been coerced to commit the crimes because of threats to his mother’s life. See id. at 75- 76. The district court declined to accept his guilty plea and, with his consent, held a hearing to determine whether he could make a prima facie showing of duress. At the duress hearing, Alisigwe testified that in 2015 he received a call from “a total stranger” who requested his help with a “business.” Id. at 109. As Alisigwe recounted it, the stranger said that Alisigwe “shouldn’t worry” and that he would call Alisigwe back. Id. The same person called him “about a week later” and said “I want you to give me an account so I will send money into the account.” Id. at 110. Six months later, the man called him and said “I want you to open accounts.” Id. at 111. At some point in the future, “[t]he same person who had been calling” sent Alisigwe “a picture of [his] mom.” Id. at 112. When Alisigwe refused to open the requested accounts, the man told Alisigwe “listen, we know everything about you and your family. So just listen to me, and do as I say, and nobody will get hurt. Nothing will happen to you to your mom. We know your father is dead. If your mom die, I don’t think you will be able to come back home. And after your mom, we will come after your family. We know everybody in your family.” Id. at 113. The man purportedly sent Alisigwe a package from Nigeria containing a list of names, a phone, and a phone number to call. See id. at 114-15. When Alisigwe called the number, a different man answered. This man told Alisigwe “to take a passport picture” and send it to Nigeria. See id. at 115. This man subsequently sent Alisigwe a passport in another person’s name by mail and told him to use it to open a bank account. 9  Alisigwe testified that he opened accounts for the unknown men using fake passports and identification documents because whenever Alisigwe said that he wanted to stop, the men “would start threatening [him] with [his] mom.” Id. at 119. He never learned the names of the men who called him. Alisigwe claimed that he communicated with the strangers by phone, but he did not know their phone numbers because they repeatedly told him to discard and replace his old phone. See id. at 129-31. Alisigwe testified that he withdrew cash from the accounts using fraudulent identification documents and delivered the cash to a man that he met at a park in Queens. See id. at 137-38. He said that he knew the person to whom he should give the money at the first meeting because the man approached him and said “I’m from your friends.” Id. at 138. He did not know the man’s name, but the man would “call [Alisigwe] on the phone and say ‘hey, I’m coming.’” Id. at 137. Alisigwe later claimed that the original unknown callers from Nigeria would call and tell him when someone was coming to collect the money. See id. Alisigwe testified that he never contacted police about the threats because he believed that the Nigerian police would not do anything about it and that the strangers would kill his mother if he contacted U.S. authorities. See id. at 116-19. The district court held that Alisigwe did not make a prima facie showing of duress because he failed to show that “he lacked a reasonable opportunity to escape harm to his family other than by engaging in illegal activity.” Id. at 183. The district court said that it was “fatal to his duress defense” that “[a]t no point during this extended period of illegal conduct … did Mr. Alisigwe report the threats against his family to any law enforcement officers.” Id. The district court explained that “[a]ny issues with Nigerian police did not 10 prevent Mr. Alisigwe from reporting the threats against his family to law enforcement in the United States.” Id. at 184. Moreover, it did not help Alisigwe’s defense of duress that “contacting U.S. authorities was also out of the question because doing so would have prevented him from cooperating with the men who were threatening him” because “Alisigwe’s subjective fears about the consequences of contacting U.S. law enforcement are insufficient to excuse compliance with this element of a duress defense.” Id. at 185. Following a three-day trial, Alisigwe was convicted of all counts but aggravated identity theft. In calculating Alisigwe’s sentence, the district court imposed two relevant enhancements under the Sentencing Guidelines: (1) an eighteen-point increase under § 2B1.1(b)(1)(J) because the offense involved an intended loss of at least $3,500,000, and (2) a two-point enhancement under § 3C1.1 for obstruction of justice based on Alisigwe’s testimony at the duress hearing. The applicable guidelines sentencing range was 135 to 168 months of imprisonment. The district court varied downward and sentenced Alisigwe to five years of imprisonment. See Special App’x 31. DISCUSSION “In evaluating the denial of a motion to suppress evidence, we review the district court’s factual findings for clear error and its conclusions of law de novo.” Levy, 803 F.3d at 122. “We review a district court’s application of the guidelines de novo, but factual determinations are reviewed for clear error.” United States v. Rainford, 110 F.4th 455, 475 (2d Cir. 2024). We resolve three issues in this appeal. First, the district court did not err by denying Alisigwe’s motion to suppress the evidence obtained from the two cellphone searches at the border. Riley did not 11 disturb our precedent holding that a search of a traveler’s property at the border is a routine search that requires no suspicion. The government has as strong an interest in digital contraband as in other property. Because the border-search exception serves the purpose of preventing the entry of unwanted persons or things into the country—not only specific types of contraband—it is not limited to cases in which the government is investigating border crimes. Second, the First Amendment does not separately require the government to obtain a warrant before searching a cellphone at the border. A special warrant requirement for cellphones designed to protect speech would be overinclusive because it would restrict searches of cellphones for evidence of non-expressive conduct, and it would be underinclusive because it would impose no limits on searches of other property that typically contain expressive content, such as notebooks and diaries. Such a novel requirement would conflict with the purpose of the border-search exception because the government may deny entry to the country based on expressive conduct, such as support for terrorist groups. Our precedent forecloses the conclusion that the First Amendment establishes its own independent warrant requirement for border searches. Third, the district court did not err in its application of the guidelines. We have held that § 2B1.1 permissibly defines the loss as the greater of the actual or intended loss. The district court correctly relied on the intended loss to calculate Alisigwe’s sentence. The district court also did not clearly err by finding that Alisigwe concocted a story at his duress hearing or by concluding that doing so amounted to a willful and material obstruction of the proceedings under § 3C1.1. 12  I The Fourth Amendment provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. “In the absence of a warrant, a search is reasonable only if it falls within a specific exception to the warrant requirement.” Riley, 573 U.S. at 382. “One of those exceptions is a search at our nation’s borders.” Irving, 452 F.3d at 123. A “Border searches … from before the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, have been considered to be ‘reasonable’ by the single fact that the person or item in question had entered into our country from outside.” Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 619. “An airport is considered the functional equivalent of a border and thus a search there may fit within the border search exception.” Irving, 452 F.3d at 123 (citing United States v. Gaviria, 805 F.2d 1108, 1112 (2d Cir. 1986)). “The border-search exception is grounded in the recognized right of the sovereign to control, subject to substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution, who and what may enter the country.” Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 620. “The Government’s interest in preventing the entry of unwanted persons and effects is at its zenith at the international border.” Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. at 152. The government has an interest in preventing the entry not only of known criminals but also of those “who may bring anything harmful into this country, whether that be communicable diseases, narcotics, or explosives.” United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 544 (1985). “It is axiomatic that the United States, as sovereign, has the inherent authority to protect, and a paramount interest in protecting, 13 its territorial integrity.” Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. at 153. 2 Because of that interest and authority, it “require[s] no extended demonstration” to establish that “searches made at the border, pursuant to the long- standing right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border.” Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 616. Just as the government’s interest in conducting a search is stronger at the border, the corresponding privacy interest of the traveler is weaker. “[A] port of entry is not a traveler’s home. His right to be let alone neither prevents the search of his luggage nor the seizure of unprotected, but illegal, materials when his possession of them is discovered during such a search.” United States v. Thirty-Seven Photographs, 402 U.S. 363, 376 (1971). As a result, “not only is the expectation of privacy less at the border than in the interior,” but “the Fourth Amendment balance between the interests of the Government and the privacy right of the individual is also struck much more favorably to the Government at the border.” Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 539-40. In light of these long-established principles, there is a “wealth of authority establishing the border search as ‘reasonable’ within the Fourth Amendment even though there be neither probable cause nor a warrant.” Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 622. The Supreme Court approved the detention of a “suspected alimentary canal smuggler” until she either 2 “Since the founding of our Republic, Congress has granted the Executive plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border, without probable cause or a warrant, in order to regulate the collection of duties and to prevent the introduction of contraband into this country.” Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 537. 14 excreted the contraband or submitted to an x-ray or rectal examination—even though the government had only reasonable suspicion. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 541. 3 The Court concluded that the search at least began as “a routine border search” and that “the detention of a traveler at the border, beyond the scope of a routine customs search and inspection, is justified at its inception if customs agents, considering all the facts surrounding the traveler and her trip, reasonably suspect that the traveler is smuggling contraband in her alimentary canal.” Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 540-41. The Court offered “no view on what level of suspicion, if any, is required for nonroutine border searches such as strip, body cavity, or involuntary x-ray searches.” Id. at 541 n.4 (emphasis added). That was not the only time the Supreme Court indicated that “nonroutine” searches involve an intrusion on intimate bodily privacy. In a case involving the “removal, disassembly, and reassembly of the fuel tank” in a vehicle attempting to cross the 3 The suspected smuggler “had made at least eight recent trips” from Bogota to the United States, revealed to customs inspectors that “she spoke no English and had no family or friends in the United States,” “possessed $5,000 in cash, mostly $50 bills, but had no billfold,” represented that “she had come to the United States to purchase goods for her husband’s store in Bogota” but “indicated to the inspectors that she had no appointments with merchandise vendors,” “had no hotel reservations,” “could not recall how her airline ticket was purchased,” and “had no shoes other than the high- heeled pair she was wearing.” Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 533-34. Based on this information, the customs inspectors developed the reasonable suspicion to “conduct a patdown and strip search,” during which the inspector “felt respondent’s abdomen area and noticed a firm fullness, as if respondent were wearing a girdle,” and “noticed that respondent was wearing two pairs of elastic underpants with a paper towel lining the crotch.” Id. at 534. 15 border, the Court explained that “the reasons that might support a requirement of some level of suspicion in the case of highly intrusive searches of the person––dignity and privacy interests of the person being searched––simply do not carry over to vehicles.” Flores- Montano, 541 U.S. at 154, 152. When the government searches property such as a vehicle, “[c]omplex balancing tests to determine what is a ‘routine’ vehicle search, as opposed to a more ‘intrusive’ search of a person, have no place.” Id. at 152. Based on these precedents, we have said that “the level of intrusion into a person’s privacy is what determines whether a border search is routine.” Irving, 452 F.3d at 123. “Routine searches include those searches of outer clothing, luggage, a purse, wallet, pockets, or shoes which, unlike strip searches, do not substantially infringe on a traveler’s privacy rights.” Id. (emphasis added). Indeed, “we have long ruled that searches of a person’s luggage or personal belongings are routine searches.” Id. at 123-24. Moreover, “pat-down searches have repeatedly been found to be routine, even when they were followed by the lifting of an applicant’s shirt or the forced removal of shoes.” Tabbaa, 509 F.3d at 99. The “potential indignity” of such a pat- down search “fail[s] to compare with the much greater level of intrusion associated with a body cavity or full strip search.” Id. (quoting United States v. Charleus, 871 F.2d 265, 268 (2d Cir. 1989)). The upshot of the case law is that “the label ‘non-routine’ should generally be reserved for intrusive border searches of the person (such as body-cavity searches or strip searches), not belongings.” Levy, 803 F.3d at 123 n.3. Only “more invasive searches, 16 like strip searches,” are nonroutine and “require reasonable suspicion.” Irving, 452 F.3d at 123. 4 B Alisigwe argues that Riley requires us to reconsider the distinction we have previously drawn between routine and nonroutine border searches. He insists that the “extraordinary intrusion of searching a person’s cellphone” cannot be “justified by the government’s interest in securing its borders.” Appellant’s Br. 36. Riley did not address the border-search exception. That case arose in the context of a search incident to arrest. See 573 U.S. at 373. The exception to the warrant requirement for a search incident to arrest allows an officer to search the area immediately around an arrestee to prevent “harm to officers and destruction of evidence.” Id. at 386. The Supreme Court considered whether the exception allowed 4 In Irving, the government not only conducted a routine search of luggage but also “found and retained two computer diskettes and a disposable camera,” and after seizing that property the government analyzed the diskettes and developed the film. Brief for the United States at 43, United States v. Irving, No. 04-971 (2d Cir. Sept. 10, 2004), 2004 WL 5261434 (emphasis added). Our court said the seizure and off-site analysis of those items “were supported by reasonable suspicion,” so “we need not determine whether they were routine or non-routine.” Irving, 452 F.3d at 124. This case involves a manual search at the border rather than a seizure or a forensic analysis. See infra note 9. The reasonable suspicion required for nonroutine searches, we have explained, “requires only ‘a particularized and objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of criminal activity.’” Levy, 803 F.3d at 123 (quoting Navarette v. California, 572 U.S. 393, 396 (2014)). “[T]he level of suspicion the standard requires is ‘considerably less than proof of wrongdoing by a preponderance of the evidence,’ and ‘obviously less’ than is necessary for probable cause.” Navarette, 572 U.S. at 397 (quoting United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989)). 17 officers to conduct a warrantless search of Riley’s cellphone when arresting him. The Court concluded that it did not. The Court explained that neither of the “rationales” for the search-incident-to- arrest exception “has much force with respect to digital content on cell phones.” Id. With respect to the government interest, the exception serves to minimize the “two risks” of “harm to officers and destruction of evidence.” Id. While those risks “are present in all custodial arrests,” there “are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data.” Id. The “[d]igital data stored on a cell phone cannot itself be used as a weapon to harm an arresting officer or to effectuate the arrestee’s escape,” and “once law enforcement officers have secured a cell phone, there is no longer any risk that the arrestee himself will be able to delete incriminating data from the phone.” Id. at 387-88. With respect to the privacy interest of the arrestee, the search- incident-to-arrest exception relies on the notion that “any privacy interests retained by an individual after arrest [are] significantly diminished by the fact of the arrest itself.” Id. at 386. But because cellphones contain “vast quantities of personal information,” the “search of the information on a cell phone bears little resemblance to the type of brief physical search” that the search-incident-to-arrest exception generally allows. Id. The Court observed that cellphones “implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse”—those items typically found when “inspecting the contents of an arrestee’s pockets”— because cellphones “differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be kept on an arrestee’s person.” Id. at 393. “[T]he possible intrusion on privacy is not physically limited in the same way” given “the gulf between physical practicability and digital [storage] capacity.” Id. at 394. The data on a 18 cellphone “could reveal an individual’s private interests or concerns” or “where a person has been.” Id. at 395-96. The Supreme Court carefully limited its decision to the search- incident-to-arrest exception and expressly noted that “other case- specific exceptions may still justify a warrantless search of a particular phone.” Id. at 401-02. 5 Applying the logic of Riley to the border-search exception leads to the conclusion that the search of a cellphone at the border is a routine search. First, we consider “the government interest.” Riley, 573 U.S. at 386. Unlike the two specific risks that the search-incident- to-arrest exception aims to avoid, the border-search exception furthers the government’s much broader “interest in preventing the entry of unwanted persons and effects.” Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. at 152. That interest is implicated with equal force “when the search is of digital data.” Riley, 573 U.S. at 386. The digital data may itself be the material that the government seeks to exclude from the country. In other words, “cell phones can contain the contraband the border search doctrine means to intercept” such as “digital contraband in the 5 The Supreme Court has also considered whether an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in cell-site location information and location history. See Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296, 313 (2018); Chatrie v. United States, 146 S. Ct. 2193, 2199 (2026). The Court decided that the “rationale underlying the third-party doctrine,” according to which there is a diminished expectation of privacy in information voluntarily conveyed to another, does not apply when the government collects such location information from a service provider. Carpenter, 585 U.S. at 315. The Court has not articulated a general Fourth Amendment rule specific to cellphones, but it has “noted [that] when considering new innovations … the Court must tread carefully in such cases, to ensure that we do not ‘embarrass the future.’” Id. at 316 (quoting Nw. Airlines v. Minnesota, 322 U.S. 292, 300 (1944)). 19 form of child pornography.” United States v. Mendez, 103 F.4th 1303, 1309 (7th Cir. 2024). “The government’s interest in detecting child pornography at the border is just as strong as its interest in intercepting firearms, narcotics, or any other prohibited item.” Id.; see also United States v. Touset, 890 F.3d 1227, 1235 (11th Cir. 2018) (“‘[D]igital’ child pornography poses the same exact ‘risk’ of unlawful entry at the border as its physical counterpart.”). In this case, Alisigwe sought to bring into the country lists of stolen personally identifiable information. That is contraband whether in digital or physical form. See United States v. Jackson, 618 F. App’x 472, 476-78 (11th Cir. 2015) (describing “a notebook containing names, social security numbers, and birthdates” as “contraband”). The government’s interest in detecting such information does not change based on the format in which it is recorded. And the fact that a cellphone contains “personal information” about the owner makes it more rather than less relevant to the rationale for the border-search exception. Riley, 573 U.S. at 386. The government has an “interest in preventing the entry of unwanted persons” and identifying those persons may depend on personal information. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. at 152. It is “‘without doubt’ that the power to exclude aliens ‘can be effectuated by routine inspections and searches of individuals or conveyances seeking to cross our borders.’” Ramsey, 431 U.S. at 619 (quoting Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 272 (1973)). “Travelers may be so stopped in crossing an international boundary because of national self- protection reasonably requiring one entering the country to identify himself as entitled to come in.” Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 154 (1925). Whether a person is entitled to enter often depends on personal information. The government must deny admission to an 20 alien determined “to have a communicable disease,” 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(1)(A)(i), “to have a physical or mental disorder and behavior associated with the disorder that may pose … a threat,” id. § 1182(a)(1)(A)(iii)(I), “to be a drug abuser or addict,” id. § 1182(a)(1)(A)(iv), to have committed acts amounting to “a crime involving moral turpitude” or a controlled substance offense, id. § 1182(a)(2)(A)(i), to be coming to the United States “to engage in prostitution” or “any other unlawful commercialized vice,” id. § 1182(a)(2)(D), to have the intent even “incidentally” to engage in espionage, the evasion of export controls, or “any other unlawful activity,” id. § 1182(a)(3)(A), to be one who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity,” id. § 1182(a)(3)(B)(i)(VII), to have “been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party,” id. § 1182(a)(3)(D)(i), or to be “likely at any time to become a public charge,” id. § 1182(a)(4)(A), among other criteria. In this case, the officer from HSI’s New York Document and Benefit Fraud Task Force who searched Alisigwe was charged with investigating “immigration fraud.” App’x 249. Because Alisigwe was a legal permanent resident with a pending application for citizenship, see id. at 47, 122, the investigation into his criminal activity also determined whether he was entitled to enter the country. As Alisigwe concedes, see id. at 414, the three crimes of which he was ultimately convicted are “aggravated felon[ies],” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(43)(M)(i), that make him “deportable,” id. § 1227(a)(2)(A)(iii), on an expedited basis, see id. § 1228(c), as well as inadmissible, see id. § 1227(a)(1)(A). Second, as in Riley we consider the “privacy interests” of the person to be searched. Riley, 573 U.S. at 386. The search-incident-to- arrest exception historically has authorized the “brief physical search” of “a patdown of [the arrestee’s] clothing and an inspection of [items] found in his pocket.” Id. at 386, 392. The border-search