Constitution-Free Vacation Zone: How the CBP Can Search Your Phone

What if I told you that nearly 200 million Americans live in a zone where the Constitution is more of a vibe than a legal guarantee? In this episode, we dive headfirst into the 100-mile border zone—a legally murky area where Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has sweeping authority to search your phone, your data, and possibly your soul... all without a warrant.

We unpack the history, the legal loopholes, and the techno-dystopian reality of modern border enforcement—from device seizures to algorithmic profiling, and how fear has become the most valuable national export.

It’s dark. It’s absurd. It’s very, very real.

So go ahead—delete your browser history. Or don’t. They already have it.

#SurveillanceState #CBP #BorderZone #PhoneSearch #DigitalPrivacy #FourthAmendment #ConstitutionalCrisis #DeepDivesPodcast #SatiricalNews #DystopiaNow #FreedomUnderWatch #PrivacyRights

Transcript

Recording from a rest stop just off I-10, where the hand dryer blows as hard as your constitutional protections do in this part of the country, it's your host, Donovan!

Welcome back to Deep Dives in the Shallow End, the show where we investigate the moldy undercarriage of American life and try not to inhale too deeply.

So here’s a question: Did you know that nearly two-thirds of the U.S. population lives in a zone where the Constitution, kinda sorta... takes a nap? Where the Fourth Amendment gets treated less like a foundational legal protection and more like that decorative pillow you’re not allowed to actually use?

That’s right. The place you think of as “America”—you know, the land of the free, home of the brave, birthplace of unlimited opinions...and soup and breadsticks...is actually wrapped in a 100-mile-wide perimeter where Customs and Border Protection can stop, question, and even search you without a warrant or probable cause. It’s like if your civil liberties were on a timer, and the second you stepped too close to a coast, border, or airport, POOF, they vanished like your childhood dog “running away” the same week your dad bought that new shovel.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory your uncle learned on a live-stream from “SovereignEagle69” on a doomsday prepper subreddit. No, this is real, on-the-books U.S. policy. It’s called the “100-Mile Border Zone,” and it effectively gives CBP sweeping authority over about 200 million Americans. That’s not a typo. Two. Hundred. Million. People.

So buckle up, buttercup, because today we’re headed into the deep end of this shallow hellscape—where civil liberties go to get waterboarded in the name of freedom, and the Constitution is less a sacred document and more of a mood board.

So what exactly is the legal duct tape holding together this constitutional car wreck?

It all starts with a little love letter from the past: the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. That’s right—1952, the golden era of casual racism, Cold War paranoia, and casseroles suspended in Jell-O. Congress passed this handy little gem giving U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authority to operate within "a reasonable distance" from any U.S. external boundary. The government then helpfully defined “reasonable” as 100 miles. Because if there’s one thing America excels at, it’s turning vague ideas into vaguely horrifying policies.  Like my dad’s policies on child rearing starting with “reasonable corporal punishment” — cut to a week later and the hose came out <he said wearily>

This is known as the “extended border doctrine,” a phrase I use on the Grayhound to justify my offensively wide manspreading. Have you ever been on a Greyhound? Well, then you understand.

This 100-mile rule isn’t just about checkpoints at lonely desert crossings. No, friend. This bad boy stretches around the entire U.S. perimeter, including oceans, lakes, and even the Great Canadian Threat (a.k.a. Quebec — they think they’re so cool because they speak French? Well, so did the Marquis de Sade…so chew on that mon chéri). And since most Americans live near water, international airports, or cities built within some colonial cartographer’s wet dream, this means roughly two-thirds of us live in this Constitution-light zone.

This area includes all of Florida, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Detroit, Philly, Houston—basically everywhere except maybe that swamp from Deliverance with all those purty-mouthed city slicker tourists. But then again, CBP is gonna wanna stay out of there anyway less they meet the likes of Amos Moses.

Inside this zone, CBP agents have powers that would make your local mall cop tumescent. They can set up random checkpoints on highways, board buses and trains, and question passengers without a warrant. They're like if the TSA had a lovechild with the KGB and reared it on impunity, Stasi rhetoric, and monster energy drinks.

The legal justification? National security. The logic? "Because terrorism, drugs, immigration, and…did we already mention immigrants because that’s a big one." The reality? A bizarre legal gray zone where your rights exist in a kind of quantum state: there and not there, depending on which federal agent is having a bad day and whether your cheekbones suggest you have an abuelo with a spice cabinet that contains more than mayo. It’s like Schroedinger’s SS.

So yeah. The 100-mile zone is a real thing. And it’s less like a safety buffer and more like the designated area where civil liberties get shanked in the yard and no one looks up from their phones.

Speaking of phones, welcome to the age where your phone isn’t just a device—it’s a full-blown psychological profile with a side hustle as a surveillance tool. And in the 100-mile zone, CBP doesn’t need a warrant or probable cause to go spelunking through it like my wife digging for old secrets and hoping to find something incriminating enough to justify the alimony. Joke’s on her; she’s just gonna find some very surprising pictures from my last trip to Thailand where I met what I thought to be a beautiful young lady. We still keep in touch <he said slyly>. And all those photos are going to get my wife is half of my sizeable debt. Good luck!

Anyway, enough about my beautiful Anchan and back to the task at hand. There are two kinds of border device searches: basic and advanced. A basic search is just an officer flipping through your phone like it’s a glossy magazine they found in a dentist’s waiting room. Potentially embarrassing? Sure. He’s gonna love my junk pics — they are impressive — in the sense that they will leave an impression, but whichever way that goes — you know, TBD.

But it’s the advanced search that really deserves its own horror movie franchise.

Advanced searches involve plugging your phone into a data extraction device. These are often built by private surveillance companies that read like rejected Mission Impossible movies—Grayshift, Cellebrite, Paraben. Sounds cool, until you realize these devices can copy your call logs, texts, social media data, browser history, cloud backups, GPS movements, deleted files, and whatever porn folder you thought was cleverly hidden under “Scabies pics for doctor"

And you might think, “But I’m an American citizen!” That is ADORABLE! Buuuut….CBP doesn’t care. They don’t even need to suspect you of a crime to do this. It's like Checkpoint Charlie meets Oprah where You get a search! And YOU get a search! In 2022 alone, CBP conducted over 45,000 electronic device searches—that’s 45,000 people who had to explain why every one of my past shopping lists included preparation H and adult diapers. I mean their shopping lists.

The official line is that this is all in the name of national security and apparently the republic’s survival is hanging by the thread of my soup recipes and ChatGPT logs about what its called when you’re not sexually attracted to the same sex, just emotionally. I was  asking for a friend.

But here’s the thing: when they copy your device, they often store that data in CBP’s Automated Targeting System, which is about as comforting as letting your emotionally distant brother with a wispy moustache and a failing podcast about culture and society babysit your toddler — look, I just don’t want that responsibility.

And guess what? That data can be shared with other government agencies and kept for up to 75 years. Because apparently your iPhone’s search history is part of the national archives now.

This is not just a privacy violation—it’s a digital colonoscopy with no anesthesia, no safe word, no kink shame. But the worst part? It’s all legal, so maybe keester that burner phone in case the bulls try to roll ya.

Let’s take a moment, shall we? Step back. Breathe in that hot, unfiltered border-zone air, thick with the scent of diesel, desolation, and beef jerky that expired during the Obama administration.

Now ask yourself: what does it mean to be American?

Because if you go by the brochure, it means freedom, liberty, due process, and the sacred right to shout your half-baked opinions across state lines without fear of reprisal. But if you go by the fine print—the kind etched in legalese and lubricated with just enough national trauma to pass muster—it means that all those rights are conditional. Situational. Flimsy as a gas station condom in August.

The 100-mile border zone turns the Constitution into something akin to a suggestion. It’s like being told you have the right to remain silent—unless you’re within a two-hour drive from Lake Michigan, in which case your silence will be interpreted as suspicious and your phone will be treated like a confession booth with facial recognition.

But the truth of it is that the ethos of America has always had a bit of a split personality. There’s the soaring rhetoric of the Founding Fathers—“Give me liberty or give me death!”—and then there’s, well, “actual history”. You know, the part where liberty was reserved for land-owning white guys in sweet-ass wigs, and death was doled out to anyone who didn’t fit the mold. Or as my grandaddy’s grandaddy, the great Cletus T. Beauregard would say from his porch down in the hollar – the same one he died on from black lung -- “The good ol’ days.”

So in a weird way, the 100-mile zone does reflect the American ethos. Not the one we perform on holidays with sparklers and Lee Greenwood songs, but the real one—the “do as we say, not as we do” one. The “freedom is mandatory, and questioning authority is suspicious” one. The one where borders are less about geography and more about which version of the law you're allowed to access today.

And maybe that’s what stings the most, well that and my mom’s review of my most recent podcast — you could’ve told me, you didn’t have to post it on the site. That the very people who cling to their pocket Constitutions like rosaries, who put flags on everything from dog collars to diapers, are often the same ones who shrug when civil liberties get treated like expired coupons.

So what’s left? An American identity that feels like a haunted house—familiar on the outside, but hollowed out on the inside, where every knock at the door might be someone demanding to see your papers because you had the audacity to fly back from Cancun with a tan and a last name that makes their monocle twitch.

Let’s talk about fear. Sweet, government-issued fear. The kind that’s been slow cooked for decades in a crockpot labeled “National Security” and served up by every administration like it’s Grandma’s famous possum pie.

Fear is the currency of compliance. It’s the reason you take off your shoes at the airport. It’s the reason my aunt's knitting needles were confiscated that one time she tried to fly to Boca. It’s why a bottle of shampoo becomes a chemical weapon at 30,000 feet.

And in the 100-mile zone, fear is the fuel.

CBP’s extended powers exist in large part because of how good we’ve gotten at being afraid. We’re afraid of terrorists, of cartels, of fentanyl, of migrants, of unaccompanied children with Dora the Explorer backpacks, aka, Trojan horses of destruction. If it can be framed as a threat, it can be used to justify a checkpoint, a database, or a digital deep dive into your phone’s folder labeled “vacation with the kids” where the real dirt collects.

And for all this border paranoia, what do most device searches yield exactly? Absolutely nothing. According to internal audits and independent reports, very few of these invasive digital searches result in arrests, charges, or any actual threats identified. We’re not catching sleeper cells—we’re catching people with unpaid parking tickets and a deeply suspicious amount of “succulent care” TikToks.

But that doesn’t matter, because fear doesn’t need results. It just needs repetition. Say “national security” enough times and suddenly your rights become optional. It’s not about whether you have something to hide—it’s whether you have something they feel like looking for.

And let’s be real: media plays its part too. Fear sells. Stories about “illegals with iPhones” and “terrorist USB drives” make for great headlines and even better ad revenue. There’s no sexy clickbait in due process. No network ever broke into your regularly scheduled programming to say, “Hey, just a heads up, the Fourth Amendment still exists—for now.” And why would it when it can be put on ice for the vast majority of the country?

So we buy into the myth. That it’s all worth it. That if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. That if the government is watching you, it must be for a good reason.

But maybe the truth is this: if they have to watch everyone, then maybe they’ve already lost whatever war they think they’re fighting. And maybe the only thing being secured… is power itself.

So what do we do with all this? Do we call our representatives? Stage a protest? Hide burner phones in our butts like we’re in some episode of Oz?

Maybe, I mean, I’ll try anything once.  TWICE, if the first time was court ordered. 

But maybe the more radical act—-the thing that ACTUALLY threatens the fear machine-—is remembering. Not just remembering the facts, but remembering that the Constitution is not a playlist or a brand or a rebel flag sticker you slap on your truck nuts. It’s supposed to mean something. Something inconvenient. Something uncomfortable. Something that applies even when it’s hard.

Because if rights don’t apply to everyone, everywhere, then they’re not rights. They’re just privileges.

So , maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe you’ll never be stopped. Maybe your phone won’t get searched, and the inscrutable photo collection of all your meals won’t end up in a federal archive next to someone’s top-secret drone footage.

But that’s not really the point, is it? The point is that they could.

And in a country that bills itself as the freest on earth, could  should still matter.

So stay inconvenient and ask questions. Maybe too many! 

Because in a world of border zones and biometric surveillance, being ungovernable might be the last truly American act left.

So until next time, take care of yourselves and others. Thanks for listening, it means a lot. Now go delete your browser history, although your TikTok addiction has been noted, and you’ve been flagged as a possible Chinese spy. Sorry, comrade.