Do you like being shackled and strip-searched? Absolutely no judgment if so, but anyone who isn’t into that sort of thing may want to avoid a holiday to the US at the moment. Although I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that. Unless you’ve been hiding under a news-blocking rock (in which case: what’s the address? And can I join you?), you’ll have noticed that Donald Trump’s America hasn’t exactly been rolling out the red carpet for visitors. There have been a number of recent incidents where white westerners – people who aren’t normally targeted by overzealous US immigration authorities – have been detained, deported or denied entry for obscure reasons.
Take the 28-year-old Welsh artist Rebecca Burke, for example. She was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) for 19 days in what her father described as “horrendous conditions”. Now, to be fair, Burke had the wrong paperwork: she hadn’t realised that she needed a working visa instead of a tourist visa in order to exchange domestic chores for accommodation with a host family. But getting imprisoned for almost three weeks over a mix-up and then being led on to a deportation flight – in chains! – back to a country that is supposedly a close ally, is obviously extreme. A Canadian woman also made headlines after being detained by Ice for two weeks when immigration enforcement officers flagged her visa application paperwork. And two German tourists were similarly held for almost two weeks in a detention centre.
In response, some countries have beefed up their advice about travel to the US. Last week, Germany updated its US travel advisory to emphasise that a visa or entry waiver does not guarantee entry. Meanwhile, the UK’s Foreign Office has revised its guidance to emphasise that you should comply with all requirements as “the authorities in the US set and enforce entry rules strictly [and] you may be liable to arrest or detention if you break the rules”.
Forget being careful about following the rules – just don’t come here. Why spend your money in the US, which is threatening to annex its neighbours and rapidly descending into authoritarianism? I don’t say any of that lightly, to be clear. The US government is not synonymous with the American people. The majority of those didn’t actually vote for Trump: only about 32% of eligible voters cast a ballot for him. There will be plenty of people in the tourism industry who are horrified about what’s happening and who may be hurt from a drop-off in international travel.
Nevertheless, choosing how we spend our cash is the greatest power most of us have. And choosing to deploy it in Trump’s America helps normalise an abnormal situation. If I (a British-Palestinian with a US green card) wasn’t based in Philadelphia already, I absolutely wouldn’t be thinking about travelling stateside right now.
I’ll tell you what I am thinking about a lot at the moment, however: whether it’s wise for me to do any sort of travel that involves interaction with US border authorities. When I got my green card 10 years ago, after spending more than $11,000 on legal fees and huge amounts of time on paperwork, I thought I’d finally be able to stop worrying about my US immigration status. Now, of course, as the high-profile detention of Mahmoud Khalil over his pro-Palestine activism shows, not even permanent residents are secure. Particularly if (like me) you have publicly expressed “controversial” ideas such as: Palestinians are human beings; Israel shouldn’t be allowed to kill children with impunity; and Americans should be outraged that their taxpayer dollars are being used to fund a genocide.
But not even keeping quiet about Palestine will protect you. Fabian Schmidt, a German green card holder, was recently detained and “violently interrogated” by US border officials – who reportedly forced him to strip and take a cold shower – for reasons that aren’t clear. Heck, you’re not even safe if you’re an American citizen. Trump recently threatened to send anti-Tesla protesters to a notorious prison in El Salvador. I used to joke about getting deported, but it’s not really something to laugh about any more – it’s something to have an emergency plan for.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
