Canaries at the Border

Canadian adult content creator Princess Shaye was passing the U.S. departures gate at Vancouver International Airport in 2021 when she was selected for “random” inspection. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers led Shaye to a windowless room and told her to turn off and surrender her devices. With no way to tell time, Shaye waited for what felt like hours. She was brought to an interviewing area to wait even longer beside other travelers. When she started crying, the officer told her she was next. Out of nowhere, he asked: “Are you a prostitute, or do you plan on doing prostitution during your stay in the U.S.?” She explained she was visiting Las Vegas to support a friend who’d just given birth. The officer claimed they’d found a Backpage ad advertising her escort services. Shaye has never advertised on Backpage (which has not been operational since 2018), nor was she shown the ad in question. “If you’re not a hooker, why am I looking at a naked photo of you?” the officer asked, pulling two items from Shaye’s luggage — a full-coverage, one-piece swimsuit and a Hitachi massager — and claiming they “made it look like she was here to work.” After nearly four hours, she broke down sobbing again, and the officer let her go with a warning that if she returned, they’d scan her phone, and if they found nudes on it, they’d know she worked in Vegas. 

In fiscal year 2021, CBP processed about 179 million travelers and recorded 37,450 device searches, making Princess Shaye one of the less than 0.02 percent of travelers searched. Last year, CBP performed a record-breaking 55,318 device searches. While Princess Shaye was ultimately allowed to enter the U.S., others, like Eddy (@edftmxxx), nominee for Best Transmasc Performer at the 2024 Trans Erotica Ewards, have been banned from entry. “I’m grateful for my nomination and would have loved to be there IRL and meet other performers,” Eddy wrote on Twitter, explaining his absence at the event. “However, I’m banned from entering the U.S. for 10+ years 一 I was detained and deported in 2022 for my line of work.” 

On the advice of colleagues in the adult industry, Shaye now carries a “clean phone” while traveling abroad. A clean phone has a new SIM card, no photos, no text messages, and is not logged in to any social media accounts. It’s a safety precaution that sex workers have been practicing and recommending to each other for years. Adult performer Jessica Starling (@J3ssicaStarling) posted a Twitter thread in 2023 warning colleagues that CBP officers would be on the lookout for sex workers traveling to Las Vegas to attend the Adult Video News (AVN) Awards. “They can search anything you have, including luggage, phone, laptop, hard drives, etc. WIPE all your devices of ANYTHING having to do with sex or porn. This includes text conversations. Delete any social media app you use for work purposes.” She suggested that workers avoid traveling with condoms, heels, or lingerie, flying directly into Vegas, or dressing in any way that might attract scrutiny. “A border officer can deny you entry for literally any reason. Do not look hot coming into AVN.”

In Eddy’s case, a clean phone wouldn’t have helped — immediately after scanning his passport, face, and fingerprints at an Atlanta airport, officials were able to match him to an ad placed on RentMen. Eddy explained in his thread that he isn’t sure whether he was flagged through facial recognition or if RentMen’s data had been handed over to authorities due to FOSTA/SESTA — the same crackdown on online advertising platforms that led to Backpage’s seizure by the Justice Department in 2018.

Yves Tong Nguyen, an organizer at Red Canary Song (RCS) NYC, says the varying risks associated with different types of work (and different groups of people) make it difficult to recommend safety practices that apply to everyone. “Obviously, everybody is being surveilled. Everybody is being criminalized as a part of this labor, but it looks different for migrant massage workers who are undocumented.” While safety plans for those who work and advertise online often prioritize digital operational security (OPSEC), most of the workers RCS serves are more concerned about surveillance and raids on places where they live and work. “It’s a world apart when you’re talking about migrant massage workers, undocumented folks, folks who are older, and people who are street workers. There are groups around the country who maintain in-person blacklists on paper.” 

Maeve, a director at CORAS Foundation, a sex work advocacy organization, agrees that precautionary measures that work for one person might not work for the next. “Border enforcement is inconsistent and discretionary. Outcomes depend on citizenship, social status, travel history, how workers advertise, documentation, and sometimes the officer they get.” In her experience, many workers prefer to share safety information face-to-face or via private and encrypted channels. With law enforcement watching what workers post online, Maeve says, “outdated information can go from useless to dangerous very quickly.” Given the escalating intensity of immigration policing in recent years, she’s not sure if she’d travel to the U.S. at all. “Right now, the major advice regarding the U.S. is: Don’t go.” Asked what she would do if she had to fly into the U.S., Maeve said, “I would whole-ass get a new phone.”

Workers like Shaye, Jessica, and Eddy have to surrender their anonymity in exchange for the ability to work online. Adult content and streaming platforms age-verify creators using official ID documents and biometric data like live-video “faceprints” collected by digital identification services like Yoti, Incode, and Ondato — many of which also hold contracts with government and law enforcement agencies. Performers are no longer the only ones being watched: Australia, France, Italy, the U.K., and 24 American states now require platforms to age-verify site visitors using biometric age estimation, document-based verification, and other methods before allowing them access to 18+ content. And a growing number of U.S. states are pushing for laws that extend some of these age-verification practices into bigger social media platforms like Discord and Instagram.

Sex workers — and those assumed to be sex workers — have always been targeted at the U.S. border: The Page Act of 1875, the first federal law to restrict immigration to the United States, specifically prohibited the entry of women from Asian countries on the presumption that many of them were sex workers who might corrupt the morality of the American public. But as conservative lawmakers and interest groups push for vaguer and broader definitions of “obscene material” and “unlawful” sex work to target sex education materials and LGBTQ+ communities, it’s easy to see how the technologies and regulations targeting the adult industry will soon be used to target anyone the administration doesn’t like. 

Last March, a French scientist was reportedly denied entry over text messages criticizing the Trump administration’s research policy, which officers claimed “reflect hatred toward Trump and can be described as terrorism.” Then, in June, an Australian journalist was detained for 12 hours at Los Angeles International Airport and was detained following a search of his devices by CBP. Now, both Australia and Canada have added information about device searches to their official travel advisories in the last year, and major news outlets worldwide have published articles about precautionary measures travelers can take to secure their data. Sex workers know that a clean phone can’t guarantee their safety passing through the border and are already strategizing new ways to avoid the omniscient eye of the surveillance state, but what will you do when its gaze falls on you?

Honey Live is a livestreamer, content creator, and writer based in Europe.