You're free to test them. See what they do when you say "it's not deleted. It's just inaccessible until I cooperate." Because it's identical in their eyes. People who confidently say "the government can't do that" rarely have a good day. They end up sharing a cell with the person in the article this discussion is about.

And we're living in an era where immigration enforcement can shoot Americans without penalty. It just makes the claims that the government can't arrest someone come across as naive.

That's precisely what happens in totalitarian states, which the USA has been for a while now, but the propaganda keeps telling how much freedom there is so people didn't even notice.