Comment by rootusrootus

What's the longest a citizen (with all appopriate documentation on them) has been held by border patrol after refusing to answer any questions? A quick search failed to get me a solid answer to this, other than a general suggestion that 72 hours is probably the practical upper limit (but no statutory limit necessarily exists), and CBP policies say 12 hours.

I'm interested to know about specific examples. Aside from extraordinary cases where the gov't is pretty sure they're dealing with a bona fide terrorist, my expectation is that CBP mostly isn't really that interested in detaining people indefinitely just for the lulz. They're probably just going to say "okay, fine, we're taking the phone, here's your receipt for it, get lost" and let you go on your way.