I think the perception is the much bigger story here than the actual change in advice by German authorities. Traveling to the US (and other countries as well) always had the chance to trigger some overzealous enforcement and/or arbitrary rejection or detainment.
But the current US government is very strongly ramping up the rethoric and actions in that area, so the risk increased and will very likely increase further. That creates an enormous amount of uncertainty and this uncertainty will have effects. For some people (white, from western countries) this is probably still a very low risk, but anyone that fits the target profile of the new government is in much more danger.
I don't want to downplay this by pointing to perception, but in the end the perception is much more likely to affect the behaviour of visitors than the murky real change. Even at a low chance, people quite justifiably don't want to risk geting locked up in a cold cell for an arbitrary amount of time. And the perception matters much more here than the quantifiable risk of getting detained.
For the average European there was never a risk of getting detained for weeks in a prison facility where the lights are never off and your only comfort is an aluminium foil blanket.
It's not just rhetoric. I agree that the risk isn't particularly high, but it did seem to have gone from 'negligible' to 'possible'.
Yeah, I would have expected to get my ESTA denied, or denied entry at the border and shipped back. It would have never occured to me that I would be arrested for weeks. It's insane to me, it can't make economical sense, it must be cheaper to just deny entry than arresting people.
Unfortunately I need to travel to the US soon for a company (on?)off-site, and the thought is in the back of my mind. Getting off the plane and getting sent back would be annoying but whatever. Getting detained would be a nightmare.
I don’t think many white people truly understand what it’s like to be a minority trying to travel to the United States.
As a personal anecdote, my family and I have been naturalized Canadian citizens for over a decade. We travel frequently on our Canadian passports and rarely encounter issues visiting the EU or UK is usually smooth and pleasant. But the U.S.? That’s a very different story.
Every time we try to cross the border, we’re pulled aside for additional questioning. Our belongings are thoroughly searched, and the process often takes hours, causing us to miss flights or arrive late.
Why? Because the country of birth listed on our passports is an Islamic country.
None of us have returned there in years. I don’t even follow Islam, I’m a Christian. And yet, U.S. officers repeatedly question me about my intentions, sometimes quoting verses from the Quran, as if I’m part of a terrorist organization. Then they seemingly get offended when I reply with "I don't know which year Mohammad was born, I'm not a Muslim."
The experience is deeply dehumanizing. From the holding area, we watch white travelers breeze through with a smile and a passport flash, while we’re treated with suspicion and delay.
For the longest time, no one seemed to care about this kind of treatment until it started affecting Europeans. Suddenly, it’s headline news. Sadly, issues like these often go ignored until they impact white Westerners or their government decides they matter. As an example, look at Gaza, which has been suffering for decades with barely a whisper until the West turned its attention briefly.
All that said, I’m genuinely glad this conversation is finally happening. And despite everything, I have nothing but love for the American people. They’re incredibly kind, and the U.S. is home to some of the most breathtaking nature I’ve ever seen. Which is why, despite the above, I am always eager to travel there.
- The Palmer Raids (1919-20)
- WW2 internment and deportation (1942-45)
- McCarthy era (all of the 50s)
- Present day
Each one seems to have deported random people. Many of whom did nothing wrong.
And honorable mention:
- Fallout from the Iranian hostage crisis (1979-81)
That last one didn't involve Europeans, per se, but it did deport a lot of innocent people. And for a bonus, here's the ~30yr pattern of anti-immigration:
- Immigration Act of 1924
- Operation Wetback of 1954
- Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996
- Present day
These things have _always_ happened here. And some of them even follow a pattern.
Are we still pretending that Guantanamo Bay never existed or that the US didn't randomly accuse people all over the world of terrorism and imprison them without a shred of evidence?
Qoute from one of the cases that triggered the warning:
> Senior described Schmidt being “violently interrogated” at Logan Airport for hours, and being stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials, and being put back onto a chair.
> For the average European there was never a risk of getting detained for weeks in a prison facility where the lights are never off and your only comfort is an aluminium foil blanket.
Maybe I'm too old, but i clearly remember that, some years ago, US did a lot of phone searches at its border and rejected or detained people based on what they found in the social media profile of the victim.
Not for weeks, but I was 'detained' for 24 hrs and then escorted in handcuffs to a plane back to Germany about 20 years ago (2002 or 2003 IIRC) for a 2 week overstay in 1998 (and since then I've been kicked out of the visa waiver program and on each followup visit interrogated in a backroom each time I wanted to enter the US for visiting GDC or E3 (basically 2hrs waiting time for 5 minutes of pointless questions and staring at my visa and passport) - I've since given up trying to travel to the US, it's just too much hassle.
And from the reports, a lack of rights for detainees to reach out faster to their relative, lawyer or just a translator. Due process is out the window, what the King says is law. It sounds cynic, but with many detentions centers run by private operators, and expanding[1], there's just no interest for those companies to get rid of their guests quickly. Why won't they get every detained person before a judge within 24 hours, especially if they are move to another state? Is paying corporations for more beds really the preferred solution over appointing more immigration judges?
How is this a perception issue? It’s a real issue.
Even if the chances of getting detained on bullshit charges are slim, the behavior of the government is now so erratic and hostile that people who care will actively avoid going to the US. And for what exactly? Does anyone still wonder? Or do they just accept that the government constantly does stupid things for no real reason?
If my country behaved like the US for just one hour, the press would find enough scandals to talk about for a year. But the US manages to make the press move on to the next scandal. And the next. And so on.
It's both. But the real issue also existed before, they just turned it up to 11 and will likely go much further.
I don't want to downplay this, the point I was trying to make is that the perception will have a much bigger effect now independent of how likely it is for each person to be actually affected. And the perception includes the expected further escalation by the current US government.
There's a lot of issues with how the US handles immigration (and other countries as well). It's essentially a lawless zone where you're completely at the mercy of the US authorities. But even if that isn't new, the rethoric and aggressive actions by the new government will make this a lot worse.
What is your country? Curious to see its border laws to see if I can be denied entry or deported if I break the law, which is clearly erratic and hostile behavior.
I'm originally from Brazil and have Swedish citizenship, last time I traveled with a stopover the USA I had a ESTA while completely forgetting I still had a valid visa on my Brazilian passport, going through immigration they caught up to that and asked me why I had 2 visas to the USA. I had to explain that while the immigration officer went on grilling me for reasons, I was just passing by the USA en route to visit family in Brazil, and it already made me quite uncomfortable.
Nowadays I have no idea if they would have detained me because it looked fishy to some immigration officer, at that time I was expecting I just wouldn't make the second leg of the flight and would be sent back to the EU, right now I won't ever chance passing by the USA simply because I have no idea what would happen.
I'm from South America, already a target to ICE/CBP, my B-2 expired and I would use ESTA instead, will that trigger something? No idea, I won't ever play my luck with that question in my head.
What a horrific ordeal, and the Latin American women she met are having worse time. The worst of it is the "just following orders" robots (the foot soldiers of fascistic 1940s say hello) having no answers to her question of "How long will I be here?".
I wonder how it'll end. Trump/MAGA/Project 2025 can turn the country into a police state (Russia-style) with even more rigged elections (Russia-style) and the populace will probably just submit (and about 50% will defend it, some of them because of ego protection (1)). They are already ignoring judges' orders, basically saying "What are you going to do about it?".
Will someone in the military lead a batallion of tanks on Washington DC?
... who tried to enter from Mexico after being denied entry from Canada instead of resolving the issue with the embassy as she was told. Plus some more sketchy shit.
TFA is light on details about the circumstances of the three Germans' detention but considering that the German ministry is basically telling people to not violate their visas or lie on their application it doesn't sound like they just had bad luck without doing anything wrong.
The military will only carry out a coup if there is a legitimate opposing nexus of political power for it to rally behind, and there isn't one.
That's not a sufficient condition, by the way, but it is a necessary one.
The establishment Dems should be fighting like hell to delegitinize this shitshow, instead of rolling over like lapdogs. I guess the donors are happy with the outcome, and I have to assume that so are they.
Yes, the issue is one of rhetoric but it’s also the fact that border officers in most countries are afforded a ridiculous amount of power relative to their education/training/ability, and for a certain personality type in that job (I think we all know who I’m talking about) it becomes an interaction with a mini-Stalin.
This isn’t a new problem, and I don’t know how to solve it other than replace border agents with computers.
The US media’s love of hysterical rhetoric (on both sides) doesn’t help either, since constantly pushing these wild narratives in media emboldens these mini-dictator personality types to do really dumb things.
The both sides argument is nonsense. We really need to stop playing into that because it really isn't true and it benefits one side much more than the other by bringing everyone down to their level.
This is simplistic dismissal of how people who accurately predicted how the US would get worse under Trump were described as hysterical. It's not symmetrical and anyone who thinks it is is delusional.
As Europeans look upon what is happening in the USA and think "that could not happen here..."
Please be aware that what happened in the USA was largely a product of Fox News (News Corp.)
While still in their nascent forms, the EU equivalents are Axel Springer [0] and Euronews [1]. If what happened in the USA is to be avoided in the EU, then these extremely ideological news publishers must be tarred and feathered as soon as possible. Avoiding the path of the "post-truth" USA [2] is the greatest task of our time.
Was actually planning to be at GDC this week & while there were other factors at play, the clincher was a feeling that there’s now a non-zero risk of getting caught up in some serious nightmare scenario like this. Seemed pretty self evident that the new administration’s rhetoric even a couple of months ago was paving the way to fascist authoritarianism & I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Tbh, even having a post like this in my user history is apparently the sort of thing that could cause complications at the border! So much for “free speech absolutism”. Makes me wonder how many others will stay silent to minimise that risk & whether that’ll lead to an illusion of support for these policies…
It’s the kind of thing I think about before going to China or if I were to visit NKorea. But hasn’t this possibility of hardcore border harassment been a feature of visiting the land of the free (the US that is) for a while now? Phones confiscated and inspected etc..
I suppose so. There have always been stories of those kinds of things, but from the outside looking in, this definitely _feels_ different. Perhaps it's the privilege of my pigment but in the past I've had little issue the handful of times I've travelled across the pond & felt like if anything did escalate it'd eventually make its way to someone reasonable. Now...? Well I guess it just feels like "reasonableness" isn't exactly being projected as a valued characteristic at any level in the current chain of authority.
Not really. I did set up a blog at biggles.games a while back but haven’t been actively updating it for quite a while & there’s nothing about our current project on there yet… probably time to do an update tbh!!
This is travel advice I've been following for 25 years; because, as the article states, the rules are not new: Go through a port of entry that is not on US soil so being refused entry does not lead to incarceration and deportation. For people in the EU, Dublin is such a port of entry. Once on a plane from there, arrival in the US is the same as for a domestic flight.
Yes, but ICE can pick you at random (probably lawfully at least close to borders and international airports) while you always have to talk with CBP when entering the country. I personally have been avoiding travel to/through the US whenever possible just because some of the wrong people have been my friends and I happen to make my money with drugs - completely legal, helping to disseminate neutral information for free, but I would not want to discuss the finer details of ethics and drug policy with an underpaid officer of any police force.
The one thing that protects me somewhat from ICE is that I am white, in my forties, middle class and non-confontational when talking with officials. Or how a friend put it: No worries, you could be drinking a beer, smoking a joint and cops would laugh about your accent before telling to have a nice one.
What port of entry is not US soil? You can be detained in an US embassy and sent off somewhere. In fact the US doesn't even have a problem with kidnapping people in the middle of a European city sending them off for torture[1].
"A criminal conviction in the United States, false information regarding the purpose of stay, or even a slight overstay of the visa upon entry or exit can lead to arrest, detention, and deportation upon entry or exit," information on the ministry's website now explicitly says.
That’s the updated guideline if you’re only reading titles
The USA hosts 35 million foreign visitors per year. These enforcement actions are absurd, but if you have your documents in order and are planing a normal tourist trip. you will be fine.
Even during normal times with proper documentation I was detained for a few hours. This is something completely different. I’ve seen deportations immediately for wrong documents. I haven’t seen 14 days of arbitrary detention before for correct documents.
They detained a green card holder who didn't break any laws and tortured him for weeks. They deported a French scientist over private speech after searching his phone. Why do you think all this is just going to be okay?
I would be scared of that as a tourist, and I guess a lot of other people would be as well. Not just because of being denied entry but for the possible investigations one could face
More accurately, people who travelled to the US in recent years were fine. The assumption that will continue to be the case is something every traveller needs to consider for themselves. It's not unreasonable for people to choose not to travel, just in case.
Honestly this seems to be a really short sighted view, none of the people that got arrested there really had reasonable grounds to be arrested, although I guess that legally they are "in the clear", but I am no expert, and this is high profile only because of the situation is absolutely absurd, and we are only two months in.
How many cases are not reported and as bad as this or worse? Am I willing to be gambling this?
It’s good advice to its own citizens and even business travelers have a right to worry.
Many years ago, I asked my wife why’d she give up her green card (or chance for a dual).
She didn’t want to deal with the hassle or a non-zero chance of getting rejected for renewal and getting deported. Her perspective was based on the ease or difficulty based on who was in power at the time.
I thought she was paranoid, but she was right and I was so very wrong.
If you’re not a citizen (and even if you are, but of the wrong “type”), things are looking worrisome.
Readit News
But the current US government is very strongly ramping up the rethoric and actions in that area, so the risk increased and will very likely increase further. That creates an enormous amount of uncertainty and this uncertainty will have effects. For some people (white, from western countries) this is probably still a very low risk, but anyone that fits the target profile of the new government is in much more danger.
I don't want to downplay this by pointing to perception, but in the end the perception is much more likely to affect the behaviour of visitors than the murky real change. Even at a low chance, people quite justifiably don't want to risk geting locked up in a cold cell for an arbitrary amount of time. And the perception matters much more here than the quantifiable risk of getting detained.
It's not just rhetoric. I agree that the risk isn't particularly high, but it did seem to have gone from 'negligible' to 'possible'.
Unfortunately I need to travel to the US soon for a company (on?)off-site, and the thought is in the back of my mind. Getting off the plane and getting sent back would be annoying but whatever. Getting detained would be a nightmare.
As a personal anecdote, my family and I have been naturalized Canadian citizens for over a decade. We travel frequently on our Canadian passports and rarely encounter issues visiting the EU or UK is usually smooth and pleasant. But the U.S.? That’s a very different story.
Every time we try to cross the border, we’re pulled aside for additional questioning. Our belongings are thoroughly searched, and the process often takes hours, causing us to miss flights or arrive late.
Why? Because the country of birth listed on our passports is an Islamic country.
None of us have returned there in years. I don’t even follow Islam, I’m a Christian. And yet, U.S. officers repeatedly question me about my intentions, sometimes quoting verses from the Quran, as if I’m part of a terrorist organization. Then they seemingly get offended when I reply with "I don't know which year Mohammad was born, I'm not a Muslim."
The experience is deeply dehumanizing. From the holding area, we watch white travelers breeze through with a smile and a passport flash, while we’re treated with suspicion and delay.
For the longest time, no one seemed to care about this kind of treatment until it started affecting Europeans. Suddenly, it’s headline news. Sadly, issues like these often go ignored until they impact white Westerners or their government decides they matter. As an example, look at Gaza, which has been suffering for decades with barely a whisper until the West turned its attention briefly.
All that said, I’m genuinely glad this conversation is finally happening. And despite everything, I have nothing but love for the American people. They’re incredibly kind, and the U.S. is home to some of the most breathtaking nature I’ve ever seen. Which is why, despite the above, I am always eager to travel there.
Depends how old you are, I guess:
- The Palmer Raids (1919-20) - WW2 internment and deportation (1942-45) - McCarthy era (all of the 50s) - Present day
Each one seems to have deported random people. Many of whom did nothing wrong.
And honorable mention:
- Fallout from the Iranian hostage crisis (1979-81)
That last one didn't involve Europeans, per se, but it did deport a lot of innocent people. And for a bonus, here's the ~30yr pattern of anti-immigration:
- Immigration Act of 1924 - Operation Wetback of 1954 - Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 - Present day
These things have _always_ happened here. And some of them even follow a pattern.
Edit: Sorry for the formatting.
> Senior described Schmidt being “violently interrogated” at Logan Airport for hours, and being stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials, and being put back onto a chair.
Source: https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-03-14/green-card-holder-fr...
Maybe I'm too old, but i clearly remember that, some years ago, US did a lot of phone searches at its border and rejected or detained people based on what they found in the social media profile of the victim.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/us/politics/private-priso...
Even if the chances of getting detained on bullshit charges are slim, the behavior of the government is now so erratic and hostile that people who care will actively avoid going to the US. And for what exactly? Does anyone still wonder? Or do they just accept that the government constantly does stupid things for no real reason?
If my country behaved like the US for just one hour, the press would find enough scandals to talk about for a year. But the US manages to make the press move on to the next scandal. And the next. And so on.
I don't want to downplay this, the point I was trying to make is that the perception will have a much bigger effect now independent of how likely it is for each person to be actually affected. And the perception includes the expected further escalation by the current US government.
There's a lot of issues with how the US handles immigration (and other countries as well). It's essentially a lawless zone where you're completely at the mercy of the US authorities. But even if that isn't new, the rethoric and aggressive actions by the new government will make this a lot worse.
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7486317
I'm originally from Brazil and have Swedish citizenship, last time I traveled with a stopover the USA I had a ESTA while completely forgetting I still had a valid visa on my Brazilian passport, going through immigration they caught up to that and asked me why I had 2 visas to the USA. I had to explain that while the immigration officer went on grilling me for reasons, I was just passing by the USA en route to visit family in Brazil, and it already made me quite uncomfortable.
Nowadays I have no idea if they would have detained me because it looked fishy to some immigration officer, at that time I was expecting I just wouldn't make the second leg of the flight and would be sent back to the EU, right now I won't ever chance passing by the USA simply because I have no idea what would happen.
I'm from South America, already a target to ICE/CBP, my B-2 expired and I would use ESTA instead, will that trigger something? No idea, I won't ever play my luck with that question in my head.
What a horrific ordeal, and the Latin American women she met are having worse time. The worst of it is the "just following orders" robots (the foot soldiers of fascistic 1940s say hello) having no answers to her question of "How long will I be here?".
I wonder how it'll end. Trump/MAGA/Project 2025 can turn the country into a police state (Russia-style) with even more rigged elections (Russia-style) and the populace will probably just submit (and about 50% will defend it, some of them because of ego protection (1)). They are already ignoring judges' orders, basically saying "What are you going to do about it?".
Will someone in the military lead a batallion of tanks on Washington DC?
1) https://www.technicianonline.com/opinion/opinion-admit-you-r...
https://newjerseymonitor.com/2025/02/27/ice-plans-massive-ne...
https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/02/27/ice-immigrant-detention-n...
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2025/0...
Being dispassionate about this: The incentives (reward vs loss) is no different from “asset forfeiture”.
... who tried to enter from Mexico after being denied entry from Canada instead of resolving the issue with the embassy as she was told. Plus some more sketchy shit.
TFA is light on details about the circumstances of the three Germans' detention but considering that the German ministry is basically telling people to not violate their visas or lie on their application it doesn't sound like they just had bad luck without doing anything wrong.
That's not a sufficient condition, by the way, but it is a necessary one.
The establishment Dems should be fighting like hell to delegitinize this shitshow, instead of rolling over like lapdogs. I guess the donors are happy with the outcome, and I have to assume that so are they.
Dead Comment
This isn’t a new problem, and I don’t know how to solve it other than replace border agents with computers.
The US media’s love of hysterical rhetoric (on both sides) doesn’t help either, since constantly pushing these wild narratives in media emboldens these mini-dictator personality types to do really dumb things.
This is simplistic dismissal of how people who accurately predicted how the US would get worse under Trump were described as hysterical. It's not symmetrical and anyone who thinks it is is delusional.
Please be aware that what happened in the USA was largely a product of Fox News (News Corp.)
While still in their nascent forms, the EU equivalents are Axel Springer [0] and Euronews [1]. If what happened in the USA is to be avoided in the EU, then these extremely ideological news publishers must be tarred and feathered as soon as possible. Avoiding the path of the "post-truth" USA [2] is the greatest task of our time.
[0] https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/06/axel-springer-politico-... (Politico, Bild, and more!)
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2024/04/11/orban-s... (Victor Orban)
[2] https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/sites/bc-magazine/summer-2020/feat...
Tbh, even having a post like this in my user history is apparently the sort of thing that could cause complications at the border! So much for “free speech absolutism”. Makes me wonder how many others will stay silent to minimise that risk & whether that’ll lead to an illusion of support for these policies…
ICE, who are currently the ones responsible for disappearing people will happily pick you up at a domestic arrival terminal.
The one thing that protects me somewhat from ICE is that I am white, in my forties, middle class and non-confontational when talking with officials. Or how a friend put it: No worries, you could be drinking a beer, smoking a joint and cops would laugh about your accent before telling to have a nice one.
My limited experience is that they either train their staff for it, or pick people who enjoy it. Or both.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_border_precleara...
People would prefer even G.W. Bush, because at least he did proper neocon wars and was aligned with the establishment.
That’s the updated guideline if you’re only reading titles
I would be scared of that as a tourist, and I guess a lot of other people would be as well. Not just because of being denied entry but for the possible investigations one could face
How many cases are not reported and as bad as this or worse? Am I willing to be gambling this?
https://thetrek.co/a-german-thru-hiker-has-been-detained-dep...
They didn’t even look at the documents she provided.
Many years ago, I asked my wife why’d she give up her green card (or chance for a dual).
She didn’t want to deal with the hassle or a non-zero chance of getting rejected for renewal and getting deported. Her perspective was based on the ease or difficulty based on who was in power at the time.
I thought she was paranoid, but she was right and I was so very wrong.
If you’re not a citizen (and even if you are, but of the wrong “type”), things are looking worrisome.