United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 21-1832

UNITED STATES,

Appellee,

v.

SHUREN QIN,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. Denise J. Casper, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Barron, Chief Judge

Howard and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.

Michael R. Schneider, with whom Good Schneider Cormier & Fried

was on brief, for appellant.

Karen L. Eisenstadt, Assistant United States Attorney, with 

whom Rachael S. Rollins, United States Attorney, was on brief, for 

appellee. 

January 9, 2023
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BARRON, Chief Judge. In this appeal, Shuren Qin 

challenges his federal convictions in the District of 

Massachusetts for conspiracy to commit export violations, visa 

fraud, making false statements to federal agents, money 

laundering, and smuggling. He does so on the ground that the 

government relied on the fruits of what he contends was an 

unconstitutional search of his laptop and cellular phone after 

those devices were seized upon his re-entry to this country after 

traveling to China. Because we conclude that the search 

constituted a border search that was supported by reasonable 

suspicion that Qin was engaged in the ongoing violation of export 

laws, we affirm. 

I.

Qin is a Chinese national who lives part of the year in 

Massachusetts and part of the year in Qingdao, China. He is 

President of LinkOcean Technologies, Ltd. ("LinkOcean"), a company 

based in Qingdao, China that imports and resells marine technology 

from the United States, Canada, and Europe to customers in China, 

including Chinese research institutes and the Chinese Navy. 

On November 24, 2017, Qin and his wife returned to the 

United States from a trip to China. Soon after their arrival, two 

Customs and Border Patrol ("CBP") agents, at the request of agents 

from other agencies who had been investigating Qin's export 
- 3 -

activities for roughly seven months, conducted an interview of Qin 

in the public baggage claim area in the airport. 

The CBP agents asked Qin during the interview about his 

export activities and to see shipping documents related to his 

exports. According to one of the CBP agents, Qin answered that he 

"only" exported items that "attach to buoys." 

After Qin indicated that the laptop and phone that he 

carried with him were used for business, the CBP agents seized 

those electronic devices for a further search and permitted Qin to 

leave the airport. Immediately after Qin's devices were seized, 

the agents who had been conducting the investigation into Qin's

export activities brought the devices to the Homeland Security 

Investigations ("HSI") forensic lab to be imaged and searched. 

The laptop contained 776 gigabytes of data, and the phone 

contained approximately 55 gigabytes of data. The "overwhelming 

majority" of the content on the devices was in Mandarin, and the 

language translation tool that the agents conducting the search

had downloaded did not provide adequate translations. No local 

agents could read, write, or translate Mandarin, and the agents

searching Qin's devices waited until an agent from New York could 

travel to the area to assist them. The agents searching Qin's 

devices sought passwords from Qin to access the encrypted items on 

his computer, but Qin did not provide them. 
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During the Mandarin-speaking agent's second trip to 

Boston, near the end of the 60-day period within which the search 

took place, the agents searching Qin's devices came across emails 

that provided evidence that Qin had illegally exported hydrophones 

to Northwestern Polytechnical University ("NWPU"), a Chinese 

university with military ties. The agents completed the search of 

the electronic devices after 60 days. After the search was 

completed, the agents did not return the electronic devices to 

Qin. Instead, the agents held the laptop for 11 more days and the 

phone for 153 more days as the agents applied for and obtained a 

search warrant, which they used to conduct an additional search.

In October 2018,1 Qin was indicted based on the evidence 

of illegal exports of hydrophones to NWPU found during the 60-day 

warrantless search of his devices. The indictment charged him 

with conspiring to illegally export parts from the United States 

to China, 50 U.S.C. § 1705; visa fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1546(a); 

conspiring to defraud the United States, 18 U.S.C. § 371; making 

false statements, 18 U.S.C. § 1001; money laundering, 18 U.S.C. § 

1956; and smuggling, 18 U.S.C. § 554. 

In September 2019, Qin moved to suppress the fruits of 

the warrantless search conducted on his laptop and phone. The 

1 Qin was initially served with a three-count indictment on 

June 26, 2018, before being served with a 14-count superseding 

indictment on October 30, 2018. 
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District Court issued a memorandum and order denying the 

suppression motion. The District Court ruled that the search was 

a "non-routine border search" and that the search was lawful 

because the agents who searched Qin's devices had reasonable 

suspicion at the time of the search that Qin's devices contained 

evidence of "export violations."2

After the District Court's ruling, Qin entered into a 

plea agreement with the government that "reserv[ed] [his] right to 

appeal the denial of his Motion to Suppress Evidence obtained from 

his laptop computer and Apple iPhone." Qin timely appealed for 

review of the District Court's decision to deny his motion to 

suppress. "In reviewing motions to suppress, we review [the 

District Court's] legal determinations de novo" and its "factual 

findings for clear error." United States v. Bater, 594 F.3d 51, 

55 (1st Cir. 2010).

II.

The Fourth Amendment protects "[t]he right of the people 

to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against 

unreasonable searches and seizures." U.S. Const. amend. IV. It 

2 The District Court stated that the agents who searched Qin's 

devices had reasonable suspicion "that the electronic devices, 

which Qin identified as devices he used for work, would contain 

evidence of export violations, including but not limited to causing 

the filing of false EEI, visa fraud . . . , and, after his 

statements to CBP agents about the limits of his exports (which 

the investigating agents reasonably believed to be false), false 

statements to federal agents." 
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further provides that "no [w]arrants shall issue, but upon probable 

cause, supported by [o]ath or affirmation, and particularly 

describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to 

be seized." Id.

Border searches -- which the Supreme Court has described 

as searches of travelers and "belongings" "crossing an

international boundary" of the United States, Carroll v. United 

States, 267 U.S. 132, 154 (1925) -- have long constituted an 

exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. See

United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 621 (1977). The exception 

derives from a recognition of the government's "inherent authority 

to protect, and a paramount interest in protecting, its territorial 

integrity." United States v. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149, 153 

(2004). 

We have distinguished between "routine" and "nonroutine" border searches. The former type of search may be 

conducted not only without a warrant upon probable cause but also 

without the government having any reasonable basis for suspecting 

that it will turn up "contraband, evidence of contraband, or . . . 

evidence of activity in violation of the laws enforced or 

administered by CBP or ICE." Alasaad v. Mayorkas, 988 F.3d 8, 19-

21 (1st Cir. 2021). The latter type of search, though it also may 

be conducted without a warrant upon probable cause, must be 
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supported by reasonable suspicion that the search will turn up

contraband or evidence of the sort just described.3 Id. at 18.

The required reasonable suspicion must be "objective" 

and based on "specific and articulable facts . . . taken together 

with rational inferences from those facts." Terry v. Ohio, 392 

U.S. 1, 21 (1968). The evidence needed to support reasonable 

suspicion is less than that needed to support probable cause and 

"considerably" less than that needed for "proof of wrongdoing by 

a preponderance of the evidence." United States v. Sokolow, 490 

U.S. 1, 7 (1989). 

III.

We begin with Qin's contention that insofar as the 

District Court was right to rule both that the search at issue was 

a border search and that it was "non-routine,"4 the search still 

violated the Fourth Amendment because the District Court erred in 

3 Whether a search is "'routine' or 'not routine' often 

depends on the 'degree of invasiveness or intrusiveness associated 

with' the search." United States v. Molina-Gómez, 781 F.3d 13, 19 

(1st Cir. 2015) (quoting United States v. Braks, 842 F.2d 509, 

511-12 (1st Cir. 1988)). "[N]on-routine" border searches involve 

a greater "degree of invasiveness or intrusiveness" than "routine" 

searches. Id. In assessing whether searches of electronic devices 

are routine or non-routine, this court has considered factors 

including whether the searches were conducted manually so as to 

limit the amount of content reviewed; whether the data reviewed 

was "resident on the device;" and whether "deleted or encrypted 

files" were viewed. See Alasaad, 988 F.3d at 18-19. 

4 The government does not dispute on appeal the District 

Court's ruling that the type of border search that was conducted 

here was a non-routine one. 
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finding that the government had demonstrated that the agents who 

searched Qin's devices had the required reasonable suspicion. Qin 

understands the ruling to rest on the ground that the record 

supportably shows that the agents who searched his electronic 

devices had reasonable suspicion that the devices would contain

evidence of Qin's ongoing efforts to export controlled marine 

instruments to China without proper licensure in violation of U.S. 

export laws. But, Qin contends, the record simply does not show 

as much. We disagree. 

Well before the CBP agents interviewed Qin at the airport 

about his export activities concerning China, federal agents from 

a number of agencies had been investigating those activities. And 

from that investigation, those agents had already generated 

evidence of the following kinds.

First, the agents who had been investigating Qin's 

export activities had gathered evidence that reasonably led them 

to conclude that Qin had shown a past interest in flouting U.S. 

export laws while conducting his business with clients in China. 

This evidence included Qin's expression of interest in using a 

common practice to evade U.S. export laws, namely the establishment 

of a front company based in the United States. In Qin's case, the 

front company that he expressed interest in creating would purchase 

autonomous underwater vehicles ("AUVs") without a U.S. export 

license and then unlawfully export the unlicensed AUVs to China.
- 9 -

An AUV is a type of unmanned underwater vehicle ("UUV") that can 

"operate without being 'tethered' to another vehicle." The

evidence of Qin's past interest in flouting U.S. export laws that 

the agents investigating his export activities had gathered also 

included his request to an undercover agent posing as a U.S. seller 

of AUVs not to disclose to a U.S. manufacturer of AUVs -- who bears 

responsibility for acquiring an export license when a product is 

sold for export to China -- that the end users for the AUVs that 

Qin was seeking were in China. 

Second, the agents investigating Qin's export activities

had gathered evidence that the clients of Qin's company, LinkOcean, 

included entities to which the United States restricted or 

prohibited certain kinds of exports. These clients included 

Chinese research institutes5 and the PLA Navy, which is the naval 

warfare branch of the Chinese Army that oversees the development 

and operation of surface warships, submarines, and unmanned 

submersible vehicles.

Third, the agents investigating Qin had gathered

evidence that Qin had expressed interest in exporting products to 

5 Although the research institutes that the agents knew to be 

clients of LinkOcean were not on the "Entity List," which 

identifies entities that are believed to be involved in "activities 

contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of 

the United States" and requires additional licensing requirements, 

see 15 C.F.R. § 744.16, certain products require a license if they 

are shipped to any client in China, including the research 

institutes that the agents were aware were Qin's clients. 
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China through LinkOcean that require export licenses, including 

AUVs. And, relatedly, the agents knew at the time of the search 

that Qin had expressed an interest in exporting to China products 

that are on the U.S. Munitions List and cannot be exported from 

the United States to China under the U.S. Arms Embargo against 

China -- namely, sonobuoys, which are defense articles used in 

anti-submarine warfare. 

Finally, the agents investigating Qin had gathered

evidence concerning Qin's willingness to conceal the nature of his 

export activities from authorities. This evidence included

documents filed with the U.S. government concerning approximately 

31 of LinkOcean's transactions involving exports that listed 

LinkOcean as the "ultimate consignee," even though the company was 

a reseller of the exported products and was often or always aware 

of the identity of the end users of those exported products. The 

evidence also included Qin's having asked a U.S. seller not to

disclose the end user for a product when the seller filled out the 

export documents to provide to the U.S. government.

Thus, all that evidence had already been gathered in the 

course of the investigation into Qin when the CBP agents questioned 

him at the airport as he was returning from China about the nature 

of his exports to China. And so, after Qin answered during that 
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questioning that he exported "only" items that "attach to buoys,"6

as the District Court found that he did, we conclude that at least 

at that point, the agents who then conducted the search of Qin's 

electronic devices had reasonable suspicion that Qin was engaging 

in the kind of unlawful export activities that he contends the 

record fails to show that the agents had reason to suspect. For, 

at least as of that point, the agents who conducted the search of 

Qin's electronic devices not only had all the information gathered 

throughout the investigation into his export activities that we 

have described above. Those agents as of that point also had been 

informed of what the CBP agents had interpreted as Qin's lie to 

them about the nature of his export activities to China. See

United States v. Favreau, 886 F.3d 27, 30 (1st Cir. 2018) (finding 

that a "patent lie" to agents can, along with other evidence, 

support a reasonable suspicion that someone is "in fear of 

revealing evidence of wrongdoing"); United States v. Wright, 582 

F.3d 199, 213 (1st Cir. 2009) (finding that "reasonable suspicion 

arises not just from the combination of facts, but from their 

progression"); Sokolow, 490 U.S. at 8-9 (finding that reasonable 

suspicion requires reviewing the "totality of the circumstances"); 

United States v. Ruidíaz, 529 F.3d 25, 30 (1st Cir. 2008) 

6 The agents had evidence that Qin exported remotely operated 

side scan sonar systems, UUVs, unmanned surface vehicles, and 

hydrophones, which do not attach to buoys. 
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(explaining that "individual facts, taken in the aggregate [may 

be] sufficient to trigger a reasonable suspicion that some criminal 

activity was afoot -- and that the defendant was involved").

Moreover, Qin does not dispute that, if the agents who 

conducted the search were armed with the requisite suspicion

concerning his ongoing violations, then they would have had reason 

to suspect that evidence of the suspected export violations would 

be contained on Qin's electronic devices. Accordingly, we conclude 

that the record shows that the agents possessed the requisite 

reasonable suspicion to search those devices. 

Qin challenges this conclusion in part by arguing that 

the agents who searched his devices could not have reasonably 

believed that he lied to CBP agents at the airport about whether 

he exported "only" items that attach to buoys. In particular, he 

argues that the agents who searched his devices had evidence that

he was not very fluent in English and that he said that things 

that "attach to buoys" are "the types of things" that he exported 

to China rather than the "only" things. But, given the evidence 

in the record that Qin spoke "excellent" English and the CBP 

agents' reports about Qin's responses to their questions, the 

District Court did not clearly err in finding that the agents 

reasonably believed that Qin lied to them about the types of 

products that he exported. See United States v. Espinoza, 490 

F.3d 41, 46 (1st Cir. 2007) ("[W]hen two or more legitimate 
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interpretations of the evidence exist, the factfinder's choice 

between them cannot be deemed clearly erroneous.").7 

Qin separately argues that there were innocent 

explanations for the conduct that the government contends 

supported the reasonable suspicion of the agents who searched Qin's 

devices and that the agents who searched those devices were aware 

of such explanations when they conducted the search. In 

particular, Qin argues that the record shows that the agents who 

searched his devices were aware that some of the technologies that 

he sought were used for academic in addition to military purposes; 

that he had financial incentives to conceal the end users of the 

7 We note as well that our conclusion is not undermined even 

if we accept Qin's contention that the diagrams Qin showed to the 

CBP agents during the interview portrayed technologies that Qin 

exported that do not necessarily attach to buoys, given that Qin 

does not contend that the technologies depicted cannot attach to 

buoys. We also note that there is no merit to Qin's contention 

that the agents who searched Qin's devices could not have had 

reasonable suspicion at the time of the search in November simply

because they conceded they did not have such suspicion in October 

and nothing happened between October and November. In addition to 

the fact that the agents who searched Qin's devices obtained 

evidence that Qin had lied to CBP agents at the airport in 

November, the agents' subjective experience is not the relevant 

inquiry. See United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 (2002). 

Rather, the relevant inquiry is an objective one based on all "the 

cumulative information available to [the agents]" at the time of 

the search. Id. And, because the inquiry is an objective one, we

also reject Qin's contention that the agents who searched his 

devices could not have relied on the lie as a predicate for 

determining that they had reasonable suspicion because the agents 

had decided to conduct the search weeks before the lie. See id.
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products he exported on some occasions; and that "some of the 

components of the sonobuoys [that Qin was interested in] may have 

been made in Canada" and may therefore not be barred for export by 

U.S. export controls. Qin relatedly argues that the evidence that 

the export documents associated with his transactions did not 

disclose who his end users were could not have reasonably generated

suspicion, because disclosure of end users is not legally required 

under U.S. export regulations. He further contends that even if 

such disclosure was legally required, it was U.S. sellers -- rather 

than buyers like Qin -- who were responsible for submitting the 

information to the U.S. government and thus for any omissions in 

the information submitted. 

But, in pressing these specific points, Qin does not 

dispute that the agents had evidence of Qin's past expression of 

a willingness to violate export laws, the nature of the clients of 

his company in China, the products that he was interested in 

exporting to China, and his misleading answer to the agents at the 

airport about his export activities with China. Nor does Qin

dispute that the agents possessed evidence that the export 

documents associated with approximately 31 of his export 

transactions did not disclose the end users of the items exported 

in those transactions or that Qin asked one seller not to disclose 

the end user for a product when the seller filled out the export 

documents to provide to the U.S. government. Thus, Qin's focus on 
- 15 -

the favorable inferences that could be drawn from the evidence 

that the agents who searched his devices had is ultimately a 

contention that those agents knew from that evidence that there 

existed "the possibility of innocent conduct." Wright, 582 F.3d 

at 205 (quoting Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 277 (2002)). But, the agents 

need not have ruled out that possibility to have reasonably 

suspected that the conduct was not innocent, id., and, for the 

reasons explained above, the unique "factual mosaic" that the 

collection of evidence in this case created, see United States v. 

Pontoo, 666 F.3d 20, 28 (1st Cir. 2011), gave rise to the required 

reasonable suspicion of ongoing export violations. 

Qin does also highlight evidence in the record that he 

contends shows that the agents who searched his devices knew of 

his past honesty and lawfulness in some contexts concerning his 

export activities, as if that evidence suffices to establish that 

the agents did not have reason to suspect his ongoing violation of 

export laws. For example, Qin notes that he listed the Chinese 

Navy as one of LinkOcean's clients on the LinkOcean website; he 

was "very open" with some prospective business partners about who 

his clients were; he "repeatedly asked" a U.S. seller and an 

undercover agent to submit the paperwork required to obtain export 

licenses; and he decided not to purchase sonobuoys because he 

believed that sonobuoys "require[d] an exporting license or 

permit."
- 16 -

But, this evidence at most shows that the agents who 

searched Qin's devices knew that Qin sometimes revealed who his 

clients were and sometimes chose to abide by the law. Such 

evidence does not show -- indeed, does not even purport to 

show -- that the agents lacked all the evidence that the record 

supportably shows they also had, which included evidence of his 

past expression of interest in violating the export laws, the 

nature of his clients, the products he was interested in exporting, 

his lie to the agents at the airport, and the concealment of his 

end users. 

Thus, here, too, Qin is necessarily equating evidence 

that might support a conclusion that his conduct was innocent with 

evidence that could refute other evidence that, based on a "broadbased consideration of all the attendant circumstances," United 

States v. Brown, 500 F.3d 48, 54 (1st Cir. 2007), including 

"objective observations" coupled with "consideration of the modes 

or patterns of operation of certain kinds of lawbreakers," United 

States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 418 (1981), supports a reasonable 

suspicion that the conduct is not innocent. But, evidence that 

can support the possibility of innocent conduct is not evidence 

that, on its own, suffices to show that there was no evidence of 

the required reasonable suspicion. 

We thus find that, given the specific facts of this case, 

taken all together, the agents conducting the search of Qin's 
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devices had reasonable suspicion that Qin was exporting controlled 

marine instruments to China without proper licensure, in violation 

of U.S. export laws. And, Qin does not dispute that, insofar as 

the agents had such suspicion, they also had a reasonable basis to 

suspect that evidence of this unlawful activity was contained on 

the electronic devices searched by the agents. Accordingly, we 

reject Qin's contention that the record shows that the agents who 

conducted the search of Qin's electronic devices did not possess 

the requisite reasonable suspicion needed to justify a non-routine 

border search of those devices. 

IV.

Qin next argues that, even if we were to assume that the 

agents who conducted the search of his electronic devices had the 

reasonable suspicion required for a non-routine border search, the 

search of those devices did not constitute a border search at all. 

Qin is right that if the search at issue was not a border search 

at all, then it would require both a warrant and probable cause, 

rather than merely reasonable suspicion that the electronic 

devices would contain evidence of his ongoing export violations. 

See Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 382 (2014). The District 

Court rejected the arguments that Qin makes to us as to why the 

search did not constitute a border search, however, and we do so 

as well.
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Qin rests his argument that the search at issue did not 

constitute a border search in part on its "duration," which he 

contends was so long that the search became disconnected from 

efforts to regulate the border and prevent border-related crime 

and therefore no longer fell into the border search exception. 

Qin notes that the search of his devices lasted 60 days and so 

fell beyond the 22-day search of a laptop that was upheld in 

Molina-Gómez as "not unreasonable" but that "seem[ed] lengthy."8 

United States v. Molina-Gómez, 781 F.3d 13, 21 (1st Cir. 2015). 

The search was also longer, Qin points out, than the 14-day search 

that at least one other court found not to be a border search given 

its length and scope, see United States v. Kim, 103 F. Supp. 3d 

32, 57-58 (D.D.C. 2015), as well as the "presumptive" 30 days 

allotted for a search under HSI policy. 

The search at issue in this case certainly pushes the 

bounds of what may reasonably fall into the border search 

exception, and we by no means hold categorically that a search

that lasts sixty days and otherwise qualifies as a border search 

falls within the border search exception. The inquiry is context 

8 To the extent Qin did not waive the argument that, after 

the 60-day search concluded, the government impermissibly detained 

his computer for an additional eleven days and his phone for an 

additional 153 days while seeking a warrant, we do not see how 

that argument bears on the only issue before us in this appeal, 

namely whether the District Court erred in denying Qin's motion to 

suppress the evidence gathered during the preceding 60 days. 
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specific and fact dependent. We hold only that, on this record, 

the duration of the search did not in and of itself render it so 

disconnected from the purpose of the border search exception that 

it falls outside the scope of that exception, given the District 

Court's findings that the length of the search was justified by 

the amount of data that the electronic devices contained, as well 

as the language barriers and encrypted files that impeded access

to that data.

The Supreme Court has "consistently rejected hard-andfast time limits" on border searches and has instructed that, 

"[i]nstead, 'common sense and ordinary human experience must 

govern over rigid criteria.'" United States v. Montoya de 

Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 543 (1985) (quoting United States v. 

Sharpe, 470 U.S. 675, 685 (1985)). And, while the search did 

exceed the 30 days that HSI policy identifies as presumptively 

reasonable for a border search, it did not exceed the 60 days that 

HSI policy itself has identified as permissible when, as in this 

case, extensions beyond 30 days are merited by the fact-specific 

challenges that the search being conducted poses. 

Qin contends in response that the justifications the 

government puts forth for the length of the search do not in fact 

justify the length. On this score, he first contends that much of 

the content on the laptop was in English and thus did not require 

translation. But, he does not contest that much of the content on 
- 20 -

the laptop was also in Chinese. And, searching this content 

required a Mandarin-speaking agent who could not assist with the 

search for several weeks. 

Qin also argues that the agents' contention that they 

needed to detain his devices while waiting for Qin to provide them 

with passwords is undermined by the fact that the advanced

encryption mechanisms that the agents were most concerned about, 

including PGP, Keychain, and Bitlocker, were not used on the 

laptop. Qin does not suggest, however, that the laptop did not 

contain any relevant encrypted items for which a password was 

needed, so his argument does little to call into doubt the District 

Court's finding that the encrypted items -- and the wait for the 

passwords -- helped justify the length of the search. 

Qin separately argues that, independent of the length of 

the search, it was sufficiently intrusive to be not a border search

but rather "a general exploratory search in the hope that evidence 

of a crime might be found." See Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United 

States, 282 U.S. 344, 356-58 (1931). Qin argues in this connection 

that the government used keyword searches to look for a broad array 

of business records, financial documents, and technical documents 

and schematics.9

9 We note that Qin acknowledges that, under Alasaad, border 

searches can include searches not only for "contraband or evidence 

of contraband," but also for evidence of border-related crime, see
- 21 -

But the fact that the agents used keywords to search for 

such records, documents, and schematics does not, on its own, show 

that the search fell outside the scope of a border search, given 

the nature of the suspected criminal activities concerning the 

conduct of Qin's business. After all, such records, documents,

and schematics can contain "contraband, evidence of such 

contraband, or . . . evidence of activity in violation of the laws 

enforced or administered by CBP or ICE," all of which can be 

searched for during a border search. Alasaad, 988 F.3d at 21. 

Moreover, Qin does not point to any specific keywords that, he 

says, were used for the purpose of a general exploration rather 

than a search for information about the ongoing export violations 

of which the agents were suspicious. Thus, we do not see how Qin's 

assertion about the keywords used by the agents turns this search 

into a general exploratory search.

Qin does also advance the related contention -- in 

arguing that the search was too intrusive to constitute a border 

search -- that, while searching his laptop, the government looked 

"broadly for evidence of past and future crime," not "ongoing or 

imminent" criminal conduct. To support this contention, Qin points 

988 F.3d at 21, and that Alasaad governs our decision in this case. 

And while Qin argues that we should revisit Alasaad en banc and 

hold that border-related searches should not include evidence of 

border-related crime, that contention has no bearing on how we 

must rule as a panel. 
- 22 -

out that the agents continued to search for evidence even after 

they saw that the last email on the laptop was from May 2017.

But, the record shows that the laptop did contain

evidence created after May 2017, and there is nothing in the record 

to indicate that the agents were not searching this later evidence. 

Moreover, old emails can shed light on future actions, so the 

agents could have reasonably believed that the old emails were 

relevant to their search for ongoing conduct. Thus, we do not see 

how Qin's contention about the date of the last email on the laptop 

supports a finding that the agents only searched for past criminal 

conduct. 

Accordingly, we conclude that neither the length nor 

scope of the search at issue placed it outside the scope of a 

border search and thus that neither probable cause nor a warrant 

was required for the search to be lawful under the challenges posed 

and the Fourth Amendment. And that is so in this case, even taking 

into consideration both how long the search lasted and how 

comprehensive it was, given the suspicion that the agents who 

searched Qin's electronic devices reasonably had that a search of 

those devices would turn up evidence of his ongoing export 

violations.10

10 Because we conclude that the agents in this case had 

reasonable suspicion to conduct the search at issue, we need not 

address Qin's argument that, if the agents' search was not 
- 23 -

V.

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the District 

Court is affirmed.

supported by reasonable suspicion, the fruits of their search 

should be suppressed because the agents did not act in good faith.