They have to let you in. Doesn't mean they have to let you roam the country freely. They can just send you to some form of detention.

▲

laughing_man an hour ago | parent | next [-]

They can hold you for a few hours while they investigate, but they can't just arbitrarily detain you without a legal basis.

▲

iamnothere 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That isn’t true. They can detain you briefly for questioning at the border, but if there is no crime then you will be released. Feel free to dig into historical court cases about border detention if you disagree.

If you get charged with a crime, things are very different.

▲

nucleardog 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Nope, no disagreement. I just see your take as very optimistic.

There is no court at the border. If the agent decides you're going to jail, you're going to jail. The decision may be reversed/corrected after, but it's still going to be a big, expensive problem for you and you _are_ going to be detained for a time.

Not to mention walking up with an empty phone and telling the agent to "fuck off" when they ask about it sure sounds eerily similar to the facts of the case in the linked article. I'd wager that's a good way to land an obstruction charge.

	▲	iamnothere 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		If the abuse is egregious, you have a decent chance of pro bono representation or a lawsuit payout. In any case, activism comes with personal risk, and part of activism is accepting that risk while attempting to protect others. (This person was an activist, and it’s likely that they wanted to confine the damage to themselves.) For the second part, having an empty phone is not a crime, and being arrested for this would be a major scandal. The tech press and political outlets would be all over it. It’s generally a good idea to avoid directly antagonizing border guards, though.