Overview
- Wilmer Chavarria filed a 15-page lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging CBP and DHS policies as unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
- Chavarria, a Vermont school superintendent and naturalized citizen, says CBP detained him for hours in July at Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport and pressured him to surrender his devices and passwords.
- The complaint asks the court to set aside 2018 directives that permit “basic” device inspections without suspicion and “advanced” forensic reviews with supervisory approval.
- CBP says it searched the devices of less than 0.01% of international travelers in fiscal 2025 as annual device searches climbed from about 8,500 in 2015 to more than 55,000 this year.
- The Department of Justice declined to comment, and DHS and CBP did not provide immediate comment, while the case could reshape how border-search powers apply to digital data.