Traveling Internationally? What to Know About Airport Phone Searches at the US Border | KQED

Don't have anything political or religious stuff on your phone.

Encrypt and upload those stuff to a Non-US cloud account, then delete them all from your phone. If you want to be extra safe, after you upload all the sensitive materials to a cloud account, make a separate back up of you non-sensitive data, then wipe your phone and then restore. Any traces of sensitive political stuff should be gone, since modern phones would delete the encryption key tied to the old data. Make it look as "normal" as possible. Keep your photos on their, pets, family photos, everything you're fine with the government seeing (so, nothing political).

And make sure you have your documents, take photos of all of them and back up to cloud. If you were born outisde of the US, the burdon of proof of Citizenship apparantly lies on the claimant. Even if you were born in the US, still have documents ready.

If its non-essential travel, like tourism, I'd suggest just not cross the US border (neither in or out) until times are safer. I'd only consider exiting the US border if you are planning leaving permanently, otherwise, just don't cross the border.

There are plenty of places within the country that you can visit without getting caught uo with the border shenanigans. (But please do not travel to a republican jurisdiction)

I’m this close to quitting my job so I don’t have to go.

So, this is work travel? Oof, good luck. Have your documents ready and you should be fine.

Act nice, Don't argue with the border agents, you can't win a confrontaton with them. If anything goes wrong, your only chance to win is in court (and hopefully, the rule of law hasn't completely collapsed)

TLDR: Just delete all sensitive data and you can go ahead and consent to searches without worrying, they won't be finding anything.

If it makes you feel any better I came back from an international trip at some point when this was all being reported on and neither myself, my partner, nor anyone I saw had their phones searched or was pulled aside. They asked what kind of trip it was, how long we stayed, where we went and if we had any alcohol, tobacco, or food.

We were traveling from Europe back to a "blue" State if that means anything. I would imagine the process would be more stringent depending on where you're coming from.

If you do end up going you should definitely still consider encryption + backups and logging out of or deleting apps you are signed into. You could also bring a cheap barebones burner or work phone if you have one. There are plenty of articles online that describe the process of protecting your privacy when traveling abroad and returning.

Good luck!

They will request that you turn it on and submit it to border authorities.