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 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

- 2 - 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.

- 3 - During