In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit No. 18-1973 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. DONALD WANJIKU, Defendant-Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:16-cr-00296-1 — Elaine E. Bucklo, Judge. ARGUED NOVEMBER 7, 2018 — DECIDED MARCH 19, 2019 Before ROVNER, SYKES, and BARRETT, Circuit Judges. ROVNER, Circuit Judge. Donald Wanjiku pled guilty to one count of transportation of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252A, but he retained his right to appeal the district court’s denial of his motion to suppress the primary evidence against him. That evidence included photographs and videos recovered from his cell phone, laptop and external hard drive 2 No. 18-1973 during a warrantless border search at O’Hare International Airport. We affirm. I. On June 9, 2015, Wanjiku arrived at O’Hare after a trip to the Philippines. Unbeknownst to Wanjiku, Customs and Border Patrol (“CBP”) and Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) were together conducting a criminal investigation dubbed “Operation Culprit” at the airport that day. Operation Culprit targeted certain individuals returning from three countries known to investigators for “sex tourism” and sex trafficking, including the sex trafficking of children. The investigators developed a list of initial criteria to identify individuals of interest to Operation Culprit: (1) U.S. citizen (2) men (3) between the ages of eighteen and fifty or sixty (4) returning from the Philippines, Thailand, or Cambodia (5) traveling alone (6) with a prior criminal history. Along with an unspecified number of other passengers from the eight to ten flights that investigators were monitoring that day, Wanjiku met all of the initial screening factors. That is, he is a U.S. citizen male, then aged forty-one, returning from the Philippines, traveling without any apparent companion, with a prior arrest. Investigators sought to whittle down the resulting list by further investigating these travelers before they arrived at O’Hare. Using government databases1 and publicly available 1 The investigators used a DHS system called “TECS” to conduct their research. TECS allows investigators to search other databases linked to CBP (continued...) No. 18-1973 3 social media, they determined that Wanjiku’s prior arrest was for contributing to the delinquency of a minor,2 that this was his third trip to the Philippines in two years, that this trip was sixty days in length, and that he had no apparent affiliation with the Philippines other than these trips. For example, they were unable to find business or family ties to the Philippines for Wanjiku. The investigators determined that Wanjiku had booked a prior flight using an email address that incorporated the name “Mr. Dongerous,” which heightened their suspicions based on their belief that this was a play on the word “dong,” which is vulgar slang for penis.3 Using that email address, they searched Facebook and found a public Facebook page associ- ated with that address. The person in the profile picture 1 (...continued) including the National Criminal Information Center (“NCIC”), the National Automated Immigration Lookout System (“NAILS”), ...
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