Over the Past year, United States Customs and Border Protection staff searched more phones and electronic devices at the border than ever before, according to new statistics published by the government agency. Phone searches jumped around 17 percent during the past 12 months—with a marked increase over the past six months.
Newly published CBP figures show that for the full fiscal year of 2025—running from October 2024 to the end of September 2025—border agents conducted around 55,424 searches of electronic devices. This is up from around the 47,000 searches that were completed during the government’s 2024 fiscal year.
While the number of phone searches is small compared to the millions of people entering the United States each year, the increase comes amid the Trump administration’s widespread immigration crackdown and bolstering of law enforcement surveillance capabilities. International visitors to the US have plummeted in recent months, as millions have reconsidered visiting under Trump’s hostile second administration or have taken precautions to limit their risks.
Since the Trump administration took power in January, several travelers to the US have reported long detentions or alleged they were denied entry because of messages on their phones.
Border officials have broad powers that allow them to search people’s phones when they enter the US—including citizens and green card holders. Airports and border zones generally fall outside Fourth Amendment protections that require warrants for device searches to take place. That means CBP officials can search phones, laptops, cameras, and other electronic devices, with the CBP saying people should present their electronics “in a condition that allows for the examination of the device and its contents.”
Inspections come in two varieties: basic searches, where agents manually scroll a person’s phone, and advanced searches that use external tools to copy and analyze data. While advanced searches require reasonable suspicion, refusing to give a passcode can trigger seizure and delay.
Advanced searches run on an expanding ecosystem of private firms. Common tools include Cellebrite’s UFED, which bypasses device locks and retrieves deleted files; GrayKey, designed to penetrate newer iPhones; and Magnet AXIOM, which rebuilds activity timelines from phones, computers, and cloud artifacts. Field agents rely on mobile forensics kits originally marketed for criminal investigations. Earlier this year the CBP put out a request for new tech to help it search for data on people’s phones. Even with the current tools, what once took weeks of lab work is now a routine checkpoint procedure.