That is of course terrible and should never happen, but I think it's also erroneous or illegal, not something the law permits.
I'm not defending BP or ICE practice. I was just wondering if the law actually permits the authorities to search electronic equipment of U.S citizens for no other reason than being within 100 miles of the border. That I would find truly astonishing.
That’s the law as I understand it, yes. CBP set up search checkpoints on highways (even those parallel to the border) to stop and search all vehicle traffic sometimes.
I offered that information about citizen arrests to illustrate that whether or not something is legal or permitted by law does not have much practical effect on the ability to constrain ICE/CBP. They have repeatedly ignored injunctions from federal judges.
They have done this almost 1500 times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_E...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-citizen-detained-by-ice-fran...