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"Everybody is vulnerable": Your eroding rights at the border under Trump [1]

['Carla Sinclair']

Date: 2025-08-01

This is the final part of our three-part series on protecting yourself at U.S. borders, based on our interview with ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. In Part One, we covered your rights when CBP agents interrogate you. In Part Two, we explored how to protect your devices and digital life from border searches.

Here, Wessler looks ahead to the legal battles on the horizon and shares his deepest concern: an administration that has already violated court orders and shows increasing contempt for judicial oversight. "Members of this administration keep saying things about how they don't think that they have to listen to courts," he told us. The question isn't whether they'll push boundaries — they already have. The question is how far they'll go.

Are you concerned that the executive branch is not going to respect court decisions that rule in favor of protecting people's Fourth Amendment rights?

Wessler: We are definitely concerned about that. Because members of this administration keep saying things about how they don't think that they have to listen to courts. But they keep walking up to the line, up to the edge, and then walking a little back.

There have been some real crisis points, particularly around some of these deportations to the prison in El Salvador, and the refusal to bring people back. But each time, the government was stepping right up to the line, then wavering there and sometimes staying there for quite a while, and then taking a half-step back. So it remains to be seen. So far, the courts are doing their job. More or less. It doesn't mean we're always winning, but it means judges are taking things seriously. And the government, on the whole, has been following court injunctions. We remain worried, and we're watching, and it would be just an unbelievable crisis if there were a blatant refusal to follow these court rulings. So we'll see.

But it seems like they are already ignoring the courts. How can the government get away with what they did to Abrego Garcia, who was illegally deported to El Salvador?

Read the rest of the interview with Nate Wessler of the ACLU on our ad-free Boing Boing Premium site!

Previously: A guide to protecting your privacy at U.S. borders

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