Search and seizureBorder agent seizes student's laptop without warrant
On 1 May when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent stopped Pascal Abidor, an Islamic studies doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal, at Champlain, New York’s port of entry; the agent turned on Abidor’s computer and found a picture of a rally by the Hamas militant group, something he had downloaded from the Internet for schoolwork; Abidor’s life has not been the same since
Pascal Abidor, an Islamic studies doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal, fears the U.S. government will forever have its eye on him.
“I have no control over who I am anymore,” he told he Associated Press recently. “What I do with my life doesn’t matter. How I am perceived and how I want to be perceived are not connected anymore.”
The Boston Herald reports that Abidor, who is not Muslim, was on a train home to Brooklyn on 1 May when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent stopped him at Champlain, New York’s port of entry. The agent turned on Abidor’s computer and found a picture of a rally by the Hamas militant group, something he had downloaded from the Internet for schoolwork.
Abidor said the agents handcuffed him, took him off the train, questioned him for hours, and told him they were keeping his computer and external hard drive. He was given an invoice warning him the contents would be copied and forwarded to any government agency requiring it.
His computer was returned eleven days later. Two weeks after that, he went to Britain to visit his girlfriend. When he returned, he was searched and questioned for an hour at the Newark airport in New Jersey.
“You could see the guy react as soon as he scanned my passport and the message came up,” Abidor said. “They went through everything, and asked the same questions: ’Are you Muslim, are you a convert, do you go to lectures?’”
Abidor has sued DHS, saying the border agents had no right to go through his computer files without a warrant. DHS said Abidor’s case was under investigation and would not comment on it.
In court documents responding to the lawsuit, the government asserts that border agents “are not subject to any requirement of reasonable suspicion, probable cause or warrant.” It also says that computers are like “closed containers” and that border agents have the right to search and copy them without a warrant.
“Abidor offers no reason why a different standard should apply to him,” government lawyers wrote.
