While it's true that the legality of law enforcement forcing passwords in unclear, courts can absolutely force you to enter a password even if it's not written down by holding you in contempt indefinitely.

>courts can absolutely force you to enter a password even if it's not written down by holding you in contempt indefinitely.

This is not true outside of a narrow exception. Indeed this is the core point of the 5th Amendment, to protect you from having to be witness against yourself. It's just as binding on the judicial branch as it is on the executive. Ordinarily, a court may not compel a defendant to testify or say something that could incriminate them.

The narrow exception is the "foregone conclusion doctrine", which allows compelling testimony about specific evidence the government legally knows exists, knows the defendant controls access to, and knows is authentic. All of which has a bunch of caselaw around it. The textbook example is somebody has a device open, and an officer directly witnesses illegal material on it, but before they can seize it the person manages to turn it off and now it cannot be accessed without a password. So the government can say "we witnessed this specific illegal material, and this device is owned by the defendant and we can prove from video that they have accessed the device, and we want access to that specific material". But if you're just crossing the border with a locked device, they cannot compel the password just to search through it, or even if they're suspicious of something specific. They need actual knowledge, either through their own evidence or because the person foolishly talks and confesses something.

Otherwise they can definitely physically seize the device for a time (which could be very inconvenient/expensive depending) but that's it.