A 25-year-old Montreal man has been sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison after admitting he crossed into the United States at the Alexandria Bay Port of Entry with more than 700 files of child pornography stored on his cell phone. Shneur Gurkow was formally sentenced in Syracuse federal court on Tuesday, September 15, following his guilty plea to transportation of child pornography.
Gurkow entered the country in August 2025, and prosecutors say he had spent years before that using social media platforms and foreign-based file-sharing applications to obtain the illicit material, according to WWNY. The 78-month sentence handed down by the court exceeds the five-year statutory mandatory minimum required under federal law for a first offense of this kind, as laid out under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A, which sets a maximum of 20 years for transporting child pornography across international boundaries.
How the Search Unfolded at the Border
The case was investigated jointly by Homeland Security Investigations' Buffalo Field Office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the New York State Police Computer Crimes Unit, according to Department of Justice officials cited by Newzjunky. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Gillis prosecuted the case under Project Safe Childhood, the Department of Justice initiative created in 2006 to coordinate federal, state, and local resources against technology-facilitated child sexual abuse.
Court docket entries show Gurkow made his initial appearance in September 2025 via videoconference before U.S. Magistrate Judge Miroslav Lovric and was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service without bail, per filings reviewed on PacerMonitor. Federal court filings also indicate that Homeland Security Investigations maintains a dedicated Resident Agent Office with Task Force Officers stationed directly at the Alexandria Bay Port of Entry, allowing investigators to process digital contraband cases on site as soon as they're uncovered.
Broad Authority to Search Phones at the Border
Border officers have broad legal authority under the so-called border search exception to inspect electronic devices without a warrant at international ports of entry, and they do not need reasonable suspicion to do so. Still, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that agents searched fewer than 0.01% of arriving international travelers in fiscal year 2025.
The Alexandria Bay Port of Entry on Wellesley Island, where Gurkow was arrested, completed a $215 million modernization project in July 2022 that upgraded passenger inspection lanes and administrative facilities along Interstate 81. It's the sixth-busiest crossing along the U.S.–Canada border, and traffic there has continued climbing: 72,200 conveyances passed through the port in July 2026 alone, up from 67,200 the previous July, according to data cited by CTV News.
Not the First Case of Its Kind in the Region
Border device searches leading to federal prosecutions have precedent in Northern New York. A 2012 land border search in nearby Ogdensburg resulted in a 97-month federal prison sentence for child pornography possession, according to court records referenced by FindLaw.
