Your first article's writer seems to fundamentally misunderstand what is allowable at borders. That's almost shocking considering he cites to a recent 9th Circuit (!!!) case which ruled these searches Constitutional. He also hasn't read the memos.

The policy is that the data is supposed to be deleted. Of course, if the data isn't deleted, there's no way to force the government to do so, but at the very least, anything found there could never be used against you.

The article focuses a lot on the anecdotal evidence spouted off by one traveler, a Muslim who makes frequent trips to Europe. Gee.. I wonder why ICE is suspicious of this person? Every foreign terrorist to ever hit the U.S. (since WWII) has fit that profile, so why on Earth shouldn't the feds be looking that direction? It would be frightening if they weren't.

I don't even know why you quoted this one. Was this one of the first three things which came up in Google?? I think everyone agrees that things are being confiscated sometimes. It's whether or not those things are being returned within a reasonable time frame which matters. This editorial basically says that it doesn't like the practice and that there should be legislation to stop this practice [and make the borders less secure].

Another editorial. Again, it makes no specific allegations which would lead anyone with a working understanding of Constitutional Law to think that there's anything unconstitutional happening. Just more useless bellyaching about the Bush administration, i.e., if Bush has sponsored something, it must be bad.

This is actually probably the least compelling (IMHO) of any of the three links you posted, none of which prove that there is anything being held for an unreasonable amount of time or that data which is supposed to be deleted per the policy is not being deleted. Reading these editorials, I get the sense that none of these writers have even read the ICE policies.

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