United States customs officers conducted a record number of searches of electronic devices last year of people travelling to the U.S., and a recent update to its directives adds new devices such as smart watches, SIM cards and flash drives to the list of things subject to search.
Officers searched 55,318 computers, cellphones and other devices in 2025, up 17.6 per cent from the 47,047 devices searched in 2024 and up 32.4 per cent from the 41,767 devices searched in 2023, according to statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
CBP officials won’t reveal what percentage of those searches were at the northern border with Canada or southern border with Mexico. Nor would they provide a breakdown between searches at airports versus land borders or a breakdown by land border posts.
Basic searches of devices, which can be done without any reasonable suspicion that you have done something wrong, rose from 42,725 in 2024 to 50,922 in 2025.
The number of advanced searches, where officers analyze and/or copy the contents of an electronic device, rose slightly to 4,396 from 4,322 in 2024 and 3,989 in 2023. Under CBP guidelines, officers are only allowed to perform advanced searches of devices in cases where they have a reasonable suspicion of activity that violates the laws it enforces or where there is a national security concern.
While searches of devices for non-U.S. citizens has been gradually rising, the number of searches of devices belonging to American citizens has risen sharply — from 8,657 in 2023 to 13,590 in 2025.
Last year, the Canadian government updated its travel advisory for the United States to warn that U.S. customs officers have the power to search phones and laptops at the border. U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra pushed back, saying searches of electronic devices were isolated events.
On the Canadian side of the border, the number of searches and the percentage of passengers whose electronic devices have been searched by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) while entering Canada is much lower and has been declining in recent years.
In 2024, the last year for which complete figures are available, the CBSA conducted 1,108 searches, which resulted in 498 contraventions.
In 2024, the U.S. CBP searched the devices of 0.011 per cent of 420.5 million travellers, while the CBSA only searched the devices of 0.0012 per cent of 93.7 million travellers.
Karine Martel, a spokesperson for the CBSA, said the agency has long had a policy that examinations of electronic devices should not be routine and court rulings in 2020 and 2022 have resulted in a higher threshold and limits on exercising that power.
“Additionally, in 2021, the CBSA began requiring chiefs and superintendents to approve and review personal digital device examinations performed by border services officers, introduced more detailed notetaking requirements for CBSA officers when they conduct a personal digital device examination and made it mandatory for CBSA officers to complete an online training course specific to personal digital device examinations prior to being authorized to conduct such examinations.”
While the number of travellers whose devices are searched by the U.S. CBP accounts for a small fraction of the people who entered the U.S., experts like Esha Bhandari, a Canadian who works for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), say searches of electronic devices by U.S. CBP officers has been steadily rising over the years.
“What we’ve seen is consistently that the number of searches go up year upon year,” said Bhandari. “It’s a steady increase as the government acquires more technology that makes it easier for them to conduct these searches.”
Bhandari said the ACLU has gone to court over the searches.
“The courts need to step in and place limits on these searches because they’re extraordinarily privacy invasive, and they don’t advance legitimate border interests of the government.”
There have also been cases, Bhandari said, where the government used the CBP’s power to search devices to avoid getting a warrant.
Bhandari said the U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled on the constitutionality of the searches and lower court rulings have varied, meaning that CBP officers in some areas of the U.S. potentially have more legal constraints on their ability to search devices.
For example, she said on the West Coast, a Ninth Circuit Court ruling limits device searches to looking for digital contraband. In other parts of the country, like Florida, Georgia or Minnesota, courts have been more permissive.
“We have this patchwork, this state of protections, until the Supreme Court weighs in.”
Meanwhile, a CBP directive, revised in January, governs searches of electronic devices.
A line-by-line comparison by CBC News of the new 14-page directive with its 12-page predecessor adopted in 2018 reveals a number of changes.
The previous directive says it applies to “searching, reviewing, retaining and sharing information contained in computers, tablets, removable media, disks, drives, tapes, mobile phones, cameras, music and other media players, and any other communication, electronic or digital devices subject to inbound and outbound border searches.”
The new directive spells out that flash drives, SIM cards, GPS systems, unmanned aircraft systems, vehicle infotainment systems and smart watches are also subject to being searched.
The previous directive listed several crimes that the searches are designed to detect, including terrorism and national security matters, human and bulk cash smuggling, contraband, child pornography and financial or commercial crimes related to copyright, trademark and export control violations.
The updated directive adds several offences including smuggling narcotics, firearms or other goods and transnational theft of proprietary information. They also “enable the discovery of digital contraband, such as child pornography, illicit transfer of restricted or classified information or other export-controlled information.”
In some cases, the directive tightens up or provides more detail about what exactly an officer can or cannot do while searching a device, how long the device or its contents can be kept or the rules that apply if CBP shares the device or its contents with another U.S. government department or law enforcement branch.
Border officers can conduct searches of personal electronic devices when travellers enter the United States. (Fred Greaves/Reuters)
Jessica Jensen, a Winnipeg immigration lawyer with MLT Aikins, says she is seeing signs of more advanced searches being conducted by CBP officers. She said the revised directive makes the rules governing searches clearer.
“The directive is, at least in my opinion, is seen as a positive because it does give more direction to those officers as to what they can do and when.”
While the directive includes a longer list of what kinds of devices can be searched, Jensen said officers would likely argue they already had the power to search them.
Jensen said the directive allows officers to search things that are on a device but not material that is stored in a cloud server or which requires access to the internet such as social media posts. Jensen said you should sign out of apps beforehand, remove any privileged information and switch your devices to airplane mode before handing them to a CBP officer.
“Make sure that your phone, your laptop, anything else that you’re going to travel with is in a position where you’re comfortable with an officer reviewing it.”
Jensen said you also have the option of refusing to hand over your devices, but that comes with consequences.
“I think it is very important to remind everybody that you have the right to say no if you would like to,” she said. “You just have to be prepared that you will not be travelling to the U.S. that day if you decline their request to review your phone.”
