Background
On May 8, 2024, Jose Belmonte Cardozo arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport on a flight from Bolivia and presented himself for customs inspection. U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer Sara Oliphant requested that he unlock two iPhones in his possession. Within approximately two minutes, Officer Oliphant searched the phones’ photo galleries, including their hidden folders, and discovered sexually explicit images and videos of prepubescent children.
Belmonte Cardozo was arrested and charged with five counts of sexual exploitation of a child, two counts of coercion and enticement of a minor, one count of transportation of child pornography, one count of receipt of child pornography, and one count of possession of child pornography. He moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the cell phone search, arguing the warrantless manual search violated the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied the motion, finding the search was reasonable under the border search exception and that, alternatively, Officer Oliphant had adequate individualized suspicion and acted in good faith.
Belmonte Cardozo entered a conditional guilty plea to all counts, reserving the right to appeal the suppression denial, and received an 18-year prison sentence plus 25 years of supervised release.
The Court’s Holding
The Fourth Circuit affirmed the denial of the motion to suppress. The court held that manual searches of cell phones at the border are routine border searches that do not require individualized suspicion. Writing for the panel, Judge Quattlebaum explained that while the Supreme Court’s decision in Riley v. California recognized heightened privacy expectations in cell phones, and while the Fourth Circuit’s prior decision in Kolsuz established that forensic searches of cell phones are nonroutine and require individualized suspicion, manual searches stand on different legal footing.
The court identified four key distinctions between manual and forensic searches. First, a manual search involves a person visually reviewing the device, whereas a forensic search employs machines that extract data. Second, manual searches are limited in scope by the officer’s time and attention span—here, just two minutes—while forensic searches comprehensively sweep the entire device (the Kolsuz forensic search took one month and produced 896 pages of data). Third, manual searches reveal only what an ordinary user could access, whereas forensic searches recover deleted files, cached fragments, location histories, and metadata the user never knew existed. Fourth, manual searches depend on an officer’s memory and imperfect notes, while forensic searches create permanent, searchable copies the government can retain and study indefinitely.
Balancing these differences against the government’s paramount interest in preventing contraband from entering the country at the border, the court concluded the government’s border search interests overcome individuals’ privacy expectations for manual cell phone searches. Notably, the Fourth Circuit joined all other federal circuits that have addressed this issue—the First, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits—all reaching the same conclusion.
Key Takeaways
- Manual cell phone searches at the border are routine border searches requiring no individualized suspicion, even though forensic searches remain nonroutine and require suspicion.
- The critical distinction between routine manual and nonroutine forensic searches turns on scope, methodology, permanence, and the information exposed rather than the device type alone.
- The government’s paramount interest in border security and preventing contraband entry outweighs privacy expectations in cell phone data for brief, manual searches at the border.
- All federal circuits addressing this issue have reached consensus that manual border searches of electronic devices require no individualized suspicion.
Why It Matters
This decision resolves a circuit split in law enforcement practice and closes the doctrinal gap left open by the Fourth Circuit’s prior Kolsuz decision. For travelers crossing into the United States at airports and land borders, the ruling confirms that CBP and other border agents may manually search cell phones without any suspicion. The decision reflects a compromise: while Riley v. California’s heightened privacy protections for cell phones apply in the interior of the country and to arrests generally, those protections yield to the government’s border security interests—but only for manual, time-limited, non-forensic searches.
For law enforcement, the holding provides clear authority to screen devices at the border as a routine matter. For the defense bar and privacy advocates, who filed amici curiae briefs in this case, the decision draws a firm line at forensic analysis, preserving a requirement for individualized suspicion when officers move beyond what the human eye can see during brief manual inspection. The nationwide uniformity among circuits suggests this framework is likely to remain stable and may inform future Supreme Court consideration of digital privacy and border authority.