18 May Immigration Advocate Warns of Travel Risks for Non-Citizens at U.S. Borders

Travelers but especially non-U.S. citizens may face greater difficulties traveling in and out of the country. (“US customs office” by Bjørn Bulthuis / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0 license)

By Malcolm Marshall

As border scrutiny intensifies, immigration attorneys and advocates warn of increasing risks for documented and undocumented residents traveling to and from the U.S.

Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, discussed risks and offered advice for travelers at borders to protect their rights and personal data during a May 2 American Community Media (formerly Ethnic Media Services) news briefing.

Billoo recounted a call she received about six weeks prior from a student visa holder in good standing who reached out when he thought a Muslim ban was looming.

“He says, ‘You know, I’m from a country that’s on this list of published countries by the New York Times. I’m engaged, and my wedding is set for a couple of weeks from now. Should I go?’ And it’s so hard to tell somebody to choose between like the love of their life and their ability to continue their education in the United States,” Billoo said.

Billoo explained that if the travel ban were implemented before the student returned, he might not be allowed back in. He ultimately chose to delay his wedding. “My heart broke for him,” she said. “Everybody looks forward to their wedding. Hopefully, we only have one. Some of us have a couple. The point is, it’s a big deal.”

She stressed that U.S. citizens and non-citizens face different legal standards at the border: “U.S. citizens have an absolute right to re-enter the United States. They don’t have a right to fly into the United States. That’s a privilege. They don’t have the right to hassle-free travel; that’s also a privilege. But they have an absolute right to re-enter the United States.”

Her advice to U.S. citizens? Don’t change your behavior out of fear. “Please don’t change anything about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Because as much ground as we cede right now during the Trump administration, it will not come back to us in three or three and a half years.”

Billoo encouraged travelers to be prepared and to rehearse saying their rights in advance. “I like to actually tell my audiences, say it out loud: ‘I’m going to choose to remain silent.’ Because if you’ve never said it before, you won’t say it under pressure. You won’t say it when you’re scared.”

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Travelers should also understand that border officials can hold them, question them, and search their belongings, including digital devices.

Billoo stressed the importance of safeguarding digital devices during travel. “My advice to our clients and attendees is always disable all biometric ID from your devices. You can be forced to use your fingerprint or your face to unlock your phone. You can never be forced to turn over your password.”

Some clients ask whether they should carry a burner phone. “The less personal data there is on devices you are carrying across borders, the better,” Billoo said. “But even the little you might have on a burner phone, like your best friend’s phone number, the Facebook group that you’re in, all of it becomes insecure the moment you turn over your password. So, disable biometric ID, and never ever give law enforcement your password.”

Law enforcement may take away your phone away. But if they do, they are required to give you a receipt, she said. “They’ll still be required to talk to a supervisor or a judge to get further into your phone that they could get if you didn’t give them the password.”

Billoo says she used to feel comfortable telling green card holders they were relatively safe when traveling in and out of the country.

“I actually still remember that on March 6, I told a group of green card holders [they were] pretty safe, and then Mahmoud Khalil was abducted by ICE agents right outside of his apartment, ” she said. (Khalil, a Palestinian Columbia University graduate and green card holder legally in the U.S., was a lead negotiator for student protestors who wanted the school to sever all ties with Israel.)

Biloo now advises green card holders and visa holders to minimize all non-essential travel. “Is your wedding essential? I don’t think so, but maybe it can wait. Is your sick mother essential? Probably very urgent, right? And so, it’s going to depend. But for non-citizens, we’ve advised that they minimize non-essential travel. The harsh truth is non-citizens do not have a right to re-enter the country. They are assessed for admissibility.”

She said that non-citizens can be asked a range of questions, and they should be aware of the risks in answering. “They can be asked all of the same things a citizen is going to decline to answer: Who are you with? Who did you visit? Who paid for your trip? All of those things. Mind you, they can ask that of anyone. But our advice to U.S. citizens is don’t answer those questions.”

She also warned that data collected at the border could have far-reaching consequences.

“In my years of representing people who are visited by law enforcement, one of the most fascinating types of complaints we will receive is from people who have never had a law enforcement interaction, but somebody said their name or they showed up in someone’s phone when they were coming across a border, and then, the FBI visited them,” said Billoo.

“We have to remember these agencies are all talking to each other. So, there’s a risk of what privacy am I going to sacrifice if I give up this information, if I give them my password, if I answer the questions at the border. But that has to be balanced with the risk of I may not be able to re-enter the United States.”

Billoo said Customs and Border Protection has the authority to determine if an individual is admissible or not. If not, they would be sent back where they came from on a return flight, generally within 24 to 36 hours. The process is more complicated for green card holders, whose rights are compromised at the border in a way that U.S. citizens are not burdened with.

“Green card holders are going to deal with other things like higher targeting because they are not U.S. citizens,” she said. “They should not be giving up their green card at the border. They should not be signing any documents to that effect. And they’re not going to be sent back to where they came from. Non-citizens or student visas, work visas, tourist visas, those get pulled and turned around very quickly.”

Billoo closed with a reminder that everyone has basic legal rights said there are things that she wants to make sure all travelers remember. “You always have the right to remain silent and you always have the right to an attorney no matter who you are, where you are, and so on,” she said.

“Asserting those rights will look and feel different. If you’re a U.S. citizen, you’re coming into the U.S. at the border no matter what. And we have sued in instances where the government has attempted to block people from coming in, sometimes, for example, by making it impossible for them to board a plane. But they will come back.”

She advised non-citizens to tread carefully, noting that the government has long turned people away at the border. “They did that under Trump 1,” she said. “They did it under Biden, and they will continue to do it under Trump 2. It’s really important that you’re aware of the risks of crossing borders and whether or not you’re going to be able to come back and what that means.”