Aly Esmat Negmeldin Abdellatif v. United States Department of Homeland Security

United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Argued March 14, 2024 Decided July 26, 2024
No. 20-1298
ALY ESMAT NEGMELDIN ABDELLATIF, ET AL.,
PETITIONERS
v.
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, ET
AL.,
RESPONDENTS
On Petition for Review of a Final Decision
of the Transportation Security Administration
Jay Gairson argued the cause for petitioners. With him on
the briefs was Devin T. Theriot-Orr.
Joshua P. Waldman, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice,
argued the cause for respondents. With him on the briefs were
Brian M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney
General, and Sharon Swingle, Attorney.
Before: SRINIVASAN, Chief Judge, RAO and PAN, Circuit
Judges.
Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge SRINIVASAN.

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SRINIVASAN, Chief Judge: After undergoing what he
considered an unwarranted airport security screening, Aly
Abdellatif suspected that he had been placed (improperly in his
view) on one or more government watchlists—lists that flag
persons believed to present security risks for more rigorous
airport inspections. He sought correction of the watchlists by
submitting a redress request to the Transportation Security
Administration. The agency responded that it had reviewed
Abdellatif’s request and made any appropriate corrections to
its records. But it declined to confirm or deny whether he was
on any watchlist.
Abdellatif and his wife now petition for review of that
order. They assert statutory and constitutional challenges to
the government’s administration of its traveler redress program
and to the treatment they receive when traveling. We dismiss
their petition in part for lack of standing and otherwise deny it
on the merits.
I.
A.
The routine attributes of airport security are well known to
travelers: waiting in line, presenting identification, depositing
carry-on baggage for a brief x-ray inspection, and passing
through a metal detector or body scanner. Occasionally, the
process is more involved: a Transportation Security
Administration (TSA) agent might pat down a traveler, swab
her hands, or manually search her bag. Travelers usually
undergo those additional procedures due to random selection
or because they packed something that catches an agent’s eye.
Sometimes, though, TSA undertakes enhanced security
measures pursuant to a less familiar set of policies that single
out specific travelers for special scrutiny in the name of

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national security. Those policies, called prescreening
programs, have as their foundation an array of databases
maintained by the government to identify persons who may
pose a threat to air travel safety. The Terrorist Screening
Dataset (TSDS), a repository of known or suspected terrorists,
is one such database. While much about the TSDS remains
classified, the government says it includes persons about whom
there is “reasonable suspicion” of involvement or intended
involvement in terrorist activities. Robinson Decl. ¶¶ 6–7, J.A.
165–66.
The Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), a component of the
FBI, maintains the TSDS and sorts it into sub-lists
corresponding to different kinds of travel restrictions. See
Jibril v. Mayorkas, 101 F.4th 857, 862 (D.C. Cir. 2024).
Perhaps the best known is the No Fly List. As its name
suggests, the No Fly List identifies persons who may not fly
“into, out of, within, or over the United States.” FBI v. Fikre,
601 U.S. 234, 237 (2024). Another, less-restrictive database is
the Selectee List. Persons on the Selectee List are not
categorically ineligible to board flights but are subject to
enhanced security screening at the airport. 49 C.F.R.
§ 1560.105(b)(2); see Jibril, 101 F.4th at 862. TSA
implements those restrictions in domestic airports, and it works
with air carriers and counterpart agencies to ensure
implementation of similar measures at foreign airports for
flights that will enter American airspace. 49 U.S.C. §§ 114(h),
44903(j)(2), 44906, 44907.
In addition to facing elevated scrutiny from TSA, a person
in the TSDS may be subject to enhanced vetting by U.S.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when entering the
United States. In particular, CBP may conduct “secondary
inspection,” a screening process more involved than the brief

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questioning most people undergo when crossing the border.
See Elhady v. Kable, 993 F.3d 208, 214–15 (4th Cir. 2021).
TSA administers additional prescreening programs under
its exclusive control. Two are centrally at issue here: Quiet
Skies, which covers travelers departing from domestic airports,
and Silent Partner, which pertains to persons flying into the
United States from abroad. Those programs differ from the
TSDS in that they are premised on “risk-based rules” rather
than individualized investigations of specific persons. Turner
Supp. Decl. ¶ 10, A.R. 255. While the details are classified,
risk-based rules generally “aim to identify passengers with
travel patterns matching intelligence regarding terrorist travel”
or persons with travel information “indicat[ing] an elevated
risk that [they] may be an unknown or partially-identified
terrorist.” Id. ¶¶ 6, 12 n.10, A.R. 252, 256. Individuals
identified by Quiet Skies and Silent Partner face enhanced
security screening but (unlike those in the TSDS) are not
considered “known or suspected terrorists.” Id. ¶ 30, A.R. 267.
As noted, a traveler who is on the Selectee List or who
triggers application of TSA’s risk-based rules typically must
undergo “enhanced screening” before boarding a flight that
will pass over the United States. 49 C.F.R. § 1560.105(b)(2).
Precisely what enhanced screening entails depends on the
circumstances. But the usual case, according to the
government, lasts 10–15 minutes and involves multiple
methods of screening the passenger—i.e., a body scan plus a
pat down—as well as “an explosives trace detection” search
and a “physical search of the interior of the passenger’s
accessible property, electronics, and footwear.” Turner Decl.
¶ 14, A.R. 231. (TSA does not, however, “search electronic
devices for electronic content” in this context. Id. ¶ 14 n.13,
A.R. 231.) Enhanced screening occurs in the first instance at

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an airport security checkpoint but may be repeated in whole or
part at a departure gate.
A traveler subjected to enhanced screening or secondary
inspection is not necessarily on any kind of watchlist. Quite
the contrary: according to the government, “the vast majority
of passengers designated by TSA for enhanced security
screening are designated as a result of random selection.”
Turner Supp. Decl. ¶ 3, A.R. 251. Secondary inspection, too,
can occur for many reasons, including random selection or
because an individual says or does something during a standard
inspection that arouses CBP concern.
B.
Congress has instructed TSA to “establish a procedure to
enable airline passengers[] who are delayed or prohibited from
boarding a flight” due to a prescreening program “to appeal
such determination and correct information contained in the
system.” 49 U.S.C. § 44903(j)(2)(C)(iii)(I); see id.
§§ 44903(j)(2)(G)(i), 44926. It has likewise directed TSA to
“ensure” that the databases it uses to identify passengers for
prescreening “will not produce a large number of false
positives.” Id. § 44903(j)(2)(C)(iii)(II).
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), TSA’s
parent agency, implements those mandates through the
Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (DHS TRIP). 49 C.F.R.
§§ 1560.201–1560.207. Overseen by TSA, DHS TRIP enables
a traveler who believes she has “been improperly or unfairly
delayed or prohibited” from passing through airport security or
boarding a flight to submit a redress request. Id. § 1560.205(a).
On receipt of such a request, TSA, “in coordination with . . .
TSC” and other relevant federal agencies, must review the
traveler’s submission, “correct any erroneous information, and

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provide the individual with a timely written response.” Id.
§ 1560.205(d).
C.
Aly Abdellatif is an Egyptian citizen who once lived in the
United States but has resided abroad since 2014. His wife,
Nina Araujo, is a United States citizen, and the couple has three
children. Abdellatif and Araujo allege that they and their
children are always subjected to enhanced security screening
and secondary inspection when traveling through United States
airspace or crossing the border. Both have submitted numerous
TRIP requests but consider the government’s resolution of their
inquiries unsatisfactory.
In May 2019, Abdellatif filed the TRIP request giving rise
to this lawsuit. TSA replied over a year later with its stock
response: a letter stating that it had “researched and completed
[its] review” of Abdellatif’s case and “made any corrections to
records that [its] inquiries determined were necessary,
including, as appropriate, notations that may assist in avoiding
incidents of misidentification.” Letter from Deborah O.
Moore, Dir., DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, to Aly
Abdellatif (June 4, 2020), J.A. 1. But TSA would “neither
confirm nor deny any information about [Abdellatif] which
may be within federal watchlists or reveal any law enforcement
sensitive information.” Id. The letter stated that it was a “final
agency decision” and that Abdellatif could seek judicial review
in a court of appeals, pursuant to 49 U.S.C. § 46110. Id. at 2,
J.A. 2.
Abdellatif petitioned for review in this court. While he had
submitted his TRIP request in his name alone, he and Araujo
collectively filed the petition for review on their own behalf
and on behalf of their children. They name numerous federal
agencies and officers as respondents: DHS, TSA, several non-

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TSA DHS components, assorted officials from those agencies,
and the Secretary of Transportation.
According to petitioners, their problems stem from
Abdellatif’s inclusion on both the Selectee List and “TSA’s
Watch Lists”—in particular, Quiet Skies and Silent Partner.
Pet. Br. 1, 18, 33. Petitioners allege that Abdellatif appears on
those lists due to “erroneous information and bad algorithms”
generated by TSA, and that Araujo and the children “are also
included in these data systems as a direct result of their
relationship with” Abdellatif. Id. at 1. Petitioners believe that
TSA’s responses to their TRIP requests have been plagued by
a fundamental defect in the redress process: TSA ostensibly
uses DHS TRIP “merely to correct name conflicts”—i.e.,
misidentifications—“and not to address erroneous data.” Id. at
34. In petitioners’ account, TSA received Abdellatif’s redress
requests, confirmed he was in fact the same Aly Abdellatif who
allegedly is on the Selectee List and TSA watchlists, and then
closed the inquiries, never assessing the accuracy of the
information supporting his inclusion on the lists.
We understand petitioners to assert three types of claims
rooted in those allegations. First, they contend that respondents
administer DHS TRIP in violation of the obligation to provide
a redress procedure that “correct[s] any erroneous
information.” 49 U.S.C. § 44903(j)(2)(G)(i); see id.
§ 44903(j)(2)(C)(iii)(I). Petitioners’ theory is that because
TSA allegedly does not correct inaccurate information through
DHS TRIP, its databases remain inaccurate and produce false
positives. Second, petitioners allege that the same defects give
rise to a due process violation. And third, petitioners maintain
that the enhanced screening and secondary inspections that

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they undergo amount to unreasonable searches and seizures in
violation of the Fourth Amendment.
As relief, petitioners ask the court to order respondents to
“full[y] and adequate[ly] review . . . the information and the
algorithms used for identifying threats” and to “correct[] [any]
erroneous information” concerning Abdellatif. Pet. Br. 1–2.
They also ask that they be permitted to “review and correct
erroneous information in TSA’s, DHS’s, and their
components’ data systems.” Id. at 30.
II.
A.
At the outset, we dismiss the petition as to all respondents
other than TSA. Petitioners bring this action under 49 U.S.C.
§ 46110(a), which affords a right to seek review directly in the
courts of appeals of certain “order[s] issued by” TSA, the
Department of Transportation, and the Federal Aviation
Administration. The only order under review here is a TSA
order, so no other respondent is properly before us. To be sure,
our decision in Ege v. United States Department of Homeland
Security, 784 F.3d 791, 794–95 (D.C. Cir. 2015), mentioned
that § 46110(a) permits review of “DHS” orders. But given
that TSA is a component of DHS, we take that remark in Ege
to have meant only that we may review DHS orders under
§ 46110(a) to the extent those orders pertain to TSA. Because
TSA is itself a respondent in this case, there is no basis for the
participation of other DHS components. And petitioners are no
worse off as a result: none of their claims depends on the
presence in this suit of any of the other named respondents.

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With that out of the way, we review the rest of the petition only
as it concerns TSA.
B.
TSA contends that petitioners lack Article III standing to
the extent that their claims turn on Abdellatif’s alleged
inclusion on the Selectee List. We agree.
“[T]he irreducible constitutional minimum of standing
contains three elements.” Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S.
555, 560 (1992). A litigant “must have (1) suffered an injury
in fact, (2) that is fairly traceable to the challenged conduct of
the defendant, and (3) that is likely to be redressed by a
favorable judicial decision.” Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S.
330, 338 (2016). An injury in fact is “an invasion of a legally
protected interest that is concrete and particularized and actual
or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.” Id. at 339
(citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
Petitioners’ asserted injury might be conceptualized in two
ways: they might be injured by the enhanced screening
measures they face when traveling, or they might be injured by
the mere fact that TSA maintains inaccurate information about
them in its databases. We construe their petition to assert the
first kind of harm, because, as to the second, “the mere
existence of inaccurate information in a database is insufficient
to confer Article III standing.” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez,
594 U.S. 413, 434 (2021). Put in standing terms, maintaining
erroneous information, without more, does not create a
“concrete injury” of the sort Article III requires. Owner-
Operator Indep. Drivers Ass’n, Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Transp.,
879 F.3d 339, 344–45 (D.C. Cir. 2018). Petitioners’ claims
thus can proceed only on the understanding that the harm they

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suffer is TSA and CBP’s interference with their persons and
property.
So understood, petitioners’ claims depend in part on
Abdellatif’s alleged inclusion on the Selectee List. Assuming
the truth of petitioners’ allegations, Abdellatif’s presence on
the Selectee List has triggered the enhanced screenings and
secondary inspections that form the basis of their Article III
injury. And those measures will cease only if Abdellatif is
removed from the list.
The difficulty for petitioners is that, even assuming
Abdellatif is on the Selectee List, TSA cannot remove him
from it. Petitioners bring this petition under § 46110(a), which,
for purposes of this case, affords us jurisdiction only over TSA.
But as we explained in Ege, TSC, not TSA, is the “sole entity
with . . . the authority to remove names” from the TSDS (and
thus from the Selectee List, which is part of the TSDS). 784
F.3d at 795 (alteration in original) (citation and internal
quotation marks omitted). Faced with that disconnect between
the proper respondent in a § 46110(a) case (TSA) and the entity
that can provide relief to a petitioner who complains he is on
the TSDS (TSC), Ege perceived a redressability problem: only
an order to TSC could remedy such a petitioner’s injury, but
this court cannot order TSC to do anything in the exercise of
its § 46110(a) jurisdiction. Id. at 793, 795–96. That is
precisely the situation here as well.
While TSC has abrogated Ege as to the No Fly List by
transferring final decisionmaking authority over that list to
TSA, it has not done so for the Selectee List. See Kashem v.
Barr, 941 F.3d 358, 366 (9th Cir. 2019). Under Ege, then,
petitioners lack standing insofar as their claims pertain to the

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Selectee List, because their injuries in that regard are not
redressable in this lawsuit.
Petitioners’ effort to plead around Ege is unavailing. They
insist that they “do not seek delisting from [the TSDS] as a
remedy” and instead seek review only of TSA’s actions, “data
systems[,] and procedures.” Pet. Br. 26. But even if petitioners
nominally request a remedy running only to TSA, their basic
theory of relief concerning the Selectee List necessarily hinges
on TSC. They believe TSC added Abdellatif to the Selectee
List because of erroneous information TSA generated. And
they reason that, if we order TSA to correct its records, TSC
will in turn remove him from the Selectee List. In that light,
redress of petitioners’ injuries—which, recall, must be that they
face elevated security measures, not merely that TSA retains
inaccurate information about them—requires action from TSC.
And just as the necessity of a final TSC decision precluded
standing in Ege, so too here.
Petitioners run into the same problem with respect to their
objection to DHS TRIP’s procedures for contesting
Abdellatif’s alleged inclusion on the Selectee List. Petitioners
reason that they should be permitted to bring such a claim
because TSA, rather than TSC, “administers” DHS TRIP. Pet.
Br. 26. But no matter what we might order TSA to do with
respect to DHS TRIP, TSC remains the “sole entity” that can
delist Abdellatif and remedy petitioners’ concrete injury
insofar as it stems from Abdellatif’s presence on the Selectee
List. Ege, 784 F.3d at 795 (citation and internal quotation
marks omitted). Indeed, the Ege petitioner also challenged the
adequacy of DHS TRIP, so Ege directly controls on this score.
See id. at 793, 795–96.
Although our decision in Ege compels dismissal of certain
aspects of petitioners’ claims for lack of standing, Ege does not

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end this case. Ege does not bear on petitioners’ claims
concerning TSA’s prescreening programs, such as Quiet Skies
and Silent Partner, because TSA alone controls those programs.
Inasmuch as petitioners experience enhanced security
screening or secondary inspections because they are on TSA
watchlists, then, we could remedy their injuries. Likewise for
petitioners’ Fourth Amendment claims, to the extent those
claims concern the actions of TSA or injuries allegedly flowing
from petitioners’ inclusion on TSA watchlists. And while TSA
challenges our statutory jurisdiction to entertain any of
Araujo’s claims on the ground that she was not the subject of
the order under review, we may assume statutory jurisdiction
and resolve her claims alongside Abdellatif’s on the merits,
which we opt to do. See Kramer v. Gates, 481 F.3d 788, 790–
91 (D.C. Cir. 2007); Chalabi v. Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,
543 F.3d 725, 728–29 (D.C. Cir. 2008).
III.
We now turn to the merits of petitioners’ remaining
claims. When reviewing agency actions under § 46110(a), we
ask whether the actions were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of
discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” Safe
Extensions, Inc. v. FAA, 509 F.3d 593, 604 (D.C. Cir. 2007)
(quoting 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A)).
A.
Because petitioners premise their statutory and due-
process challenges on the same alleged deficiencies in DHS
TRIP, we consider those challenges together. Petitioners’
central contention is that Abdellatif and Araujo remain on TSA
watchlists because TSA did not correct inaccurate information
about them when reviewing Abdellatif’s TRIP inquiry. That
failure, petitioners say, is a function of TSA’s alleged policy
against correcting errors, a policy that, in petitioners’ view,

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violates the agency’s statutory obligations and the Due Process
Clause.
TSA contends that petitioners lack any protected liberty
interest in air travel free from enhanced security screening or
secondary inspections, and also that Abdellatif has no
constitutional rights to assert because he is a non-citizen
abroad. But we need not resolve those issues. Even assuming
without deciding that TSA is wrong on those scores,
petitioners’ statutory and due-process challenges to DHS TRIP
still fail on the merits.
That is because the record refutes petitioners’ contention
that TSA does not correct erroneous information in the DHS
TRIP process. TSA has submitted a declaration from Stanley
Mungaray, Acting Director of DHS TRIP, in which Mungaray
explains that DHS TRIP refers redress inquiries to all agencies
with relevant equities. Those agencies, Mungaray avers,
“thoroughly review the record to determine validity and to
correct any erroneous, inaccurate, or untimely information.”
Mungaray Decl. ¶¶ 6–7, J.A. 36–37. “Other DHS TRIP
practitioners,” Mungaray further attests, “conduct a similar
review, assessing the accuracy and timeliness of any record
over which they have ownership, and . . . correct[ing],
archiv[ing], or delet[ing] the record, as appropriate.” Id. ¶ 8,
J.A. 37. A declaration from Michael Turner, TSA’s Executive
Director of Vetting, states that those same procedures “appl[y]”
to TSA prescreening programs, including Quiet Skies and
Silent Partner. Turner Supp. Decl. ¶ 31, A.R. 268. Turner
explains that, after receiving a redress inquiry, TSA analysts
“review the DHS TRIP applicant’s personal and travel
information to determine whether the individual was an
appropriate match to the Silent Partner List and/or Quiet Skies
List.” Id. And, he adds, even apart from its review of redress

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requests, TSA automatically removes individuals from the
Quiet Skies and Silent Partner lists at regular intervals.
Those sworn representations directly rebut petitioners’
claims, and petitioners give us no reason to doubt their veracity.
True, petitioners cite evidence that the government’s various
watchlist programs have experienced problems related to data
integrity, management, and oversight at various points over
several decades. But the fact that the programs have suffered
from deficiencies at times does not undermine the evidence
that, today, when TSA receives a redress inquiry, it corrects
substantive errors. Nor do petitioners make any “showing of
bad faith or improper behavior” of a kind that could upset the
“presumption of regularity” afforded executive action.
Citizens to Pres. Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402,
415, 420 (1971).
Our examination of the ex parte records TSA filed with the
court confirms the validity of its public attestations. Those
materials demonstrate that after TSA received Abdellatif’s
TRIP request, it undertook the review it says it typically
undertakes and made a reasonable judgment. To be clear: we
neither confirm nor deny whether petitioners are or ever have
been on any watchlist. We affirm only that TSA’s review of
Abdellatif’s TRIP request conformed to the statutory
requirements.
That evidence resolves petitioners’ statutory and due-
process challenges. TSA is not violating its statutory
obligations in the way petitioners allege, and petitioners make
no argument that, even if TSA is adhering to statutory
requirements, it is nevertheless violating the Due Process
Clause.

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B.
We also reject petitioners’ Fourth Amendment claims. As
an initial matter, although petitioners primarily describe their
past encounters with TSA and CBP, we take them to challenge
searches and seizures they expect to experience in the future if,
as alleged, they remain on TSA watchlists. Because petitioners
have demonstrated that the threat of those future injuries is
“real and immediate,” they may proceed on that basis. O’Shea
v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 496 (1974). Even so, nothing
petitioners have alleged amounts to a violation of the Fourth
Amendment.
Our ability to analyze petitioners’ Fourth Amendment
submission is constrained by the generality of their allegations.
Petitioners do not recount any specific search or seizure in
detail, instead offering only generalized references to
“enhanced screenings” and “custodial interviews.” Pet. Br. 1,
30–31; Reply Br. 3. We thus are left to infer that they have
undergone enhanced screening at the airport along the lines
TSA describes, as well as routine secondary inspections when
crossing the border. And we assume they will continue to be
subject to the same, absent success in this lawsuit.
Operating on those assumptions, we reject petitioners’
Fourth Amendment challenge. The Fourth Amendment
requires searches and seizures to be reasonable. U.S. Const.
amend. IV. “A search or seizure is ordinarily unreasonable in
the absence of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.” City
of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32, 37 (2000). And
“[w]here a search is undertaken by law enforcement officials
to discover evidence of criminal wrongdoing, . . .
reasonableness generally requires the obtaining of a judicial

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warrant.” Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 653
(1995).
In “limited circumstances,” however, those “usual rule[s]
do[] not apply.” Edmond, 531 U.S. at 37. Of particular
relevance, the Supreme Court has recognized that certain
searches conducted entirely without suspicion may be
reasonable when “‘special needs . . . make the warrant and
probable-cause requirement impracticable,’ and where the
‘primary purpose’ of the searches is ‘[d]istinguishable from the
general interest in crime control.’” City of Los Angeles v. Patel,
576 U.S. 409, 420 (2015) (second alteration in original) (first
quoting Skinner v. Ry. Lab. Execs. Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 619
(1989); and then quoting Edmond, 531 U.S. at 44). Searches
meeting that description often are labeled “administrative
search[es].” Elec. Priv. Info. Ctr. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec.,
653 F.3d 1, 10 (D.C. Cir. 2011).
Airport searches of the kind at issue here fall within the
administrative search framework. Their “primary goal is not
to determine whether any passenger has committed a crime but
rather to protect the public from a terrorist attack.” Id. Nor
could TSA effectively achieve that goal if individualized
suspicion, much less a warrant, were required to search a
traveler or piece of luggage.
Still, even administrative searches must be reasonable.
And to determine whether an administrative search complies
with that requirement, we balance “the gravity of the public
concerns served by the [search or] seizure, the degree to which
the [search or] seizure advances the public interest, and the
severity of the interference with individual liberty.” Illinois v.

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Lidster, 540 U.S. 419, 427 (2004) (quoting Brown v. Texas, 443
U.S. 47, 51 (1979)).
“That balance clearly favors the [g]overnment” for a
typical airport search. Elec. Priv. Info. Ctr., 653 F.3d at 10.
The public concern served by an airport search is self-evident.
“[T]here can be no doubt that preventing terrorist attacks on
airplanes is of paramount importance.” United States v.
Hartwell, 436 F.3d 174, 179 (3d Cir. 2006) (Alito, J.). The risk
to “hundreds of human lives and millions of dollars of property
inherent in the pirating or blowing up of a large airplane . . .
alone meets the test of reasonableness” for a search “conducted
in good faith for the purpose of preventing hijacking or like
damage and with reasonable scope.” United States v. Edwards,
498 F.2d 496, 500 (2d Cir. 1974) (emphasis added) (internal
citation omitted); see Nat’l Treasury Emps. Union v. Von Raab,
489 U.S. 656, 675 n.3 (1989); Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S.
305, 323 (1997) (“[W]here the risk to public safety is
substantial and real, blanket suspicionless searches calibrated
to the risk may rank as ‘reasonable’—for example, searches
now routine at airports . . . .”).
Petitioners also understandably do not dispute that airport
searches “advance[] the public interest,” in the sense of being
reasonably effective at safeguarding what they are designed to
protect. Mich. Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 454
(1990) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). After
all, “it is apparent that airport checkpoints have been effective.”
Hartwell, 436 F.3d at 180.
As for the interference with petitioners’ liberty and
privacy, the screenings the government describes—relatively
confined inspections of person and property—are not so
intrusive as to outweigh the vital governmental interests on the
other side. We have already held as much in the context of a

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particular kind of airport search—an advanced imaging
technology full-body scan. See Elec. Priv. Info. Ctr., 653 F.3d
at 3, 10. And many courts have approved other standard airport
security measures. See Edwards, 498 F.2d at 500; Hartwell,
436 F.3d at 178–81; United States v. Skipwith, 482 F.2d 1272,
1276 (5th Cir. 1973); United States v. Aukai, 497 F.3d 955,
958–63 (9th Cir. 2007) (en banc). TSA agents, moreover, do
not operate with complete on-the-ground discretion when
screening travelers but instead act under a set of standardized
operating procedures, mitigating the potential for arbitrary and
excessive intrusions on privacy. See Elec. Priv. Info. Ctr., 653
F.3d at 3.
In response, petitioners emphasize that they have been
subjected to enhanced screening rather than the standard
screening courts have regularly sustained. But the relatively
modest differences between the two procedures fail to tip the
Fourth Amendment scales against the government. We also
recognize that petitioners maintain they have at times been
detained for a longer duration than a typical enhanced airport
inspection and faced extended questioning. Their allegations
in that regard, however, are too threadbare to change the
analysis. In the Fourth Amendment context, the Supreme
Court has “consistently rejected hard-and-fast time limits” in
favor of “common sense and ordinary human experience.”
United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 543
(1985) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). So
petitioners’ vague allusions to prolonged travel delays, without
more, neither afford us a basis to deem any particular incident
unreasonable nor give us grounds for assuming anything
improper will occur in the future.
Reasonable secondary inspections at ports of entry,
including custodial interviews of the sort petitioners describe,
likewise may be sustained under the border-search doctrine.

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“[T]he Fourth Amendment’s balance of reasonableness is
qualitatively different at the international border” and “struck
much more favorably to the [g]overnment.” Montoya de
Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 538, 540. Routine searches at the
border, absent suspicion, thus are permissible “simply by virtue
of the fact that they occur at the border.” United States v.
Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 616 (1977). While not every border
search or seizure fits within that rubric, nothing in petitioners’
unspecific allegations that they have experienced secondary
inspections, even ones lasting more than an hour, causes us to
question the application of the general principle here. See
United States v. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149, 151, 154–56
& n.3 (2004) (upholding, under border-search doctrine,
suspicionless detention of approximately an hour).
Our holding is confined to the level of generality at which
petitioners present their claims. We do not give a blanket
blessing to any and all airport inspections or border interviews
of whatever type or duration. We only conclude that airport
security inspections as described in the government’s
declarations, or interviews at the border of reasonable length
and conducted in good faith, do not offend the Fourth
Amendment.
* * * * *
For the foregoing reasons, we dismiss the petition for
review to the extent it challenges Abdellatif’s alleged
placement on the Selectee List and names improper
respondents, and we otherwise deny it.
So ordered.

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