Two Canadians travelled together to the U.S. border and were interviewed by U.S. Customs. The interview went well until the final question.
The border guard asked one what he thought of their President. To which he answered” I am glad he is not our President.” That single comment earned him a 5-year ban from entering the U.S.
It was easy for those two guys to turn around and drive back into Canada, but if they had flown to a U.S. airport from Europe, it would have been very costly and a huge waste of their time.
So, that is why there are travel advisories. Imagine any country banning tourists for honestly answering such an inappropriate question. Apparently, they ban you if you refuse to answer too, so that means one has to pass a fealty test at the U.S. border, or they won’t let you in.
I never imagined this would happen in my lifetime, but I will never travel to the U.S. again. Sad, because I still want to see a couple of places still on my Bucket List.
A news story from Denmark recently reported on two young Danish backpackers who were traveling the world. After spending an incredible month and a half in New Zealand, their next destination was Hawaii. Months before their journey, they had carefully filled out and received approval for an ESTA to ensure smooth entry into the U.S. But that didn’t matter one bit.
Upon arriving in Honolulu on the morning of April 23, 2025, they mentioned at passport control that they planned to volunteer on an organic farm. They had arranged this through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), assuming — like many do — that unpaid volunteer work wouldn’t require a visa. They were immediately told to stop speaking, detained, and taken to a holding area. For five hours they were kept under guard, even when using the restroom, before being interviewed and denied entry. The reason?
Their ESTA didn’t indicate any intent to “work,” and even voluntary labor is classified as work under U.S. immigration law, thus requiring a proper work visa. WWOOF hadn’t warned them or mentioned this to them, and they hadn’t found any guidance to the contrary anywhere else.
What followed was shocking. With no flight back to New Zealand available for three days, they were fingerprinted, had their DNA taken via mouth swabs, were body searched, handcuffed, and sent to the county jail. Once there, the entire process was repeated: fingerprints, swabs, full body searches, and mugshots.
They spent three days in jail among the general prison population, without clear information or legal representation, until a lawyer finally explained what had happened on the 3rd day. Only then were they sent back to New Zealand.
These were two young, white Danish women, and they were treated like criminals over a paperwork technicality. It’s hard to imagine how others, especially non-white, non-European travelers, might be treated in similar situations.
So no, I won’t be visiting the U.S. anytime soon. That’s for damn sure.
I’m an American Immigrant in Ireland. I was born in Fargo, North Dakota and lived in Minnesota most of my life before moving here in 2018. I will not be returning to visit my family in the US until the current regime is gone. Just discussed with my mom last night, and she agreed that it’s safest for me not to enter the country as I’m pretty vocal online about my disdain for the policies and actions of trump and his minions.
They’re demanding phones from many people at the border, whether traveling on an approved visa, natural born or naturalized, and while it may be allowed, I maintain that it’s a violation of the 4th amendment’s right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, and will not ever surrender my phone, which lately leads to arrest and detention for as long as they want, no judge, no court appearance, no habeus corpus.
People are being detained for weeks with no charges being brought, no explanation of why they’re being held. The US is not a safe place to visit. It’s especially telling that many of the countries that have long been the strongest allies of the US have issued travel warnings: the UK, Canada, France, Ireland, and Germany.
Anecdote time.
My grandfather had an unpleasant experience entering Nazi Germany in 1938. He was sitting in a train compartment reading a newspaper; opposite him, another Swede was reading a different newspaper.
Enter border officials. They check their passports – and then, using a baton, one of them strikes my grandfather’s newspapers so it falls on the floor, and then steps on it. The other person is unaccosted.
My grandfather was reading a liberal newspaper; the other person a conservative newspaper. However, my grandfather was in no way prevented from entering Nazi Germany; they just made it clear that his reading habits were not popular.
Today, Europeans are reporting numerous cases of people being refused entry to the USA, detained without explanation for weeks, and even assaulted by immigration officials, some for the crime of having exercised free speech while still at home. Not even the Soviet Union did such things.
And this happens when they try to enter a country which lectures their home countries about “free speech”.
Entering the USA legally is now fraught with outright danger. Entering Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was not as unpleasant as entering the USA today. USA has abandoned free speech, imposing strict limitations on what people are allowed to say, and it has happened in the last two months.
