An immigration lawyer’s last name—the same as an international arms dealer who was under investigation—gave the Department of Homeland Security reasonable suspicion to search his phone despite the presence of confidential client files.
Adam Malik could sue over DHS’s continued retention of the data, but the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said Tuesday it wouldn’t force the department to delete it.
Malik sued for declaratory and injunctive relief after the department gave him a secondary screening on returning from Costa Rica and seized his phone. Malik had the same surname as a suspect with connections to the ...