HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — A school superintendent from Vermont said he was detained at Bush Airport for almost five hours.
Wilmer Chavarria said he is a naturalized U.S. citizen and claimed his constitutional rights were violated when he was forced to give his laptop and cell phone to officers when he landed at Bush after visiting family in Nicaragua.
“It is very ironic that in the land of the free, it is where I am being victimized in that way,” Chavarria said.
Chavarria said he has been a US citizen since 2018.
He said on July 21st, he was waiting in line at Global Entry when an officer took him aside.
That’s when he said he was detained for nearly five hours, with officers demanding he give them not only his cell phone and laptop but also the passwords associated with them.
He said he has flown through Bush Airport several times and has no problem going through body scanners or having his bags searched.
He’s a school superintendent, and claimed his devices have personal student information that he didn’t want to release.
Chavarria said he wasn’t allowed to call his attorney or talk to his family while he waited in a cold, dark part of the airport.
He said he eventually complied with the officers.
“They threatened me with extended detention, with a referral to the FBI,” he said. “They threatened me with discrediting me in the public eye and getting me to lose my job.”
“The Fourth Amendment is a source of never-ending confusion for the courts and America,” said Tom Hogan with South Texas College of Law.
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
U.S. Border Patrol policy states that agents can, however, conduct warrantless searches of Americans’ personal devices within a so-called “border zone.”
“The fact that he’s at an airport, you have a very lessened expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment,” Hogan said. “You’ve been through an airport, you’ve got to go through a body scan, and they can search your bag.”
“The only thing we can do until the Supreme Court does weigh in on this issue is tell people, ‘hey, if you travel, you should probably travel light, you should probably take a burner phone.’ They cannot access data that is on a cloud. U.S citizens can not be not allowed into this country based on denying a search, but what can happen is their phones, laptops, tablets, whatever can be seized,” said Immigration Attorney Rebekah Rodriguez.
Chavarria said officials still haven’t told him why his belongings were taken.
“If this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” he said. “I don’t think any American should be comfortable with the unchecked power that an officer should have in simply demanding that level of intrusion into your personal life.”
ABC13 reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security to confirm these details and to get any explanation. Homeland Security has not responded.
ABC13 got back a statement from CBPl, not confirming or denying this story or answering our question, but explaining that searches are critical in combating crime.
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