Device inspections at U.S. borders: 32% surge in nine months

U.S. border officers searched 52,080 electronic devices between October 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026. That number is 32 percent higher than the 39,251 devices examined during the same period last year. The total is nearly on par with the 55,424 devices searched in all of fiscal 2025, suggesting a new record is likely.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) classified 47,517 of these inspections as basic searches. Officers can conduct these without reasonable suspicion. The remaining 4,564 were advanced searches, which require reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity or a national security threat to analyze or copy data.

The agency did not disclose where these searches occurred. It withheld data on the split between the Canadian and Mexican borders, as well as the breakdown between airports and land crossings. CBP also did not release the total number of travelers who entered the country or the ratio of U.S. citizens to non-citizens subjected to inspections. These details are typically included in annual reports.

Jessica Turner, a CBP public affairs officer, wrote that device searches affect a tiny portion of the 419 million travelers who entered the country in 2025. She stated that only 0.01 percent of travelers had their devices searched. Turner said the searches aim to find digital contraband, terrorism-related content, and information relevant to admissibility.

Esha Bhandari, director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, argued that the rise warrants greater congressional oversight. She noted that the government does not explain the increase, making it difficult to speculate on the causes. Bhandari said the aggregate data obscures what is happening and that anecdotes from travelers are troubling. She cited cases where travelers were questioned about political opinions, writing, or religious practice.

In January, CBP updated its guidelines to include flash drives, SIM cards, GPS systems, drones, vehicle infotainment systems, and smart watches. The update also added smuggling of narcotics and firearms, transnational theft of proprietary information, and digital contraband to the list of target crimes. Bhandari described these changes as minor procedural shifts. She suggested the increase may reflect technological advances and the lack of federal court limits on government authority.

Laura Dawson, executive director of the Future Borders Coalition, said the increase is hard to evaluate without knowing where searches occurred or how many people crossed. She pointed to the World Cup this summer, which may have brought a more diverse mix of visitors. Dawson also cited greater border security focus and closer cooperation between Canadian and U.S. border services, including work on human smuggling and the Ryan Wedding case. By her figures, one in 9,000 crossings leads to a U.S. inspection, while one in 14,000 leads to a search on the Canadian side. The Canada Border Services Agency has not yet released its 2026 statistics.