Lucas Sielaff was in a car row waiting to cross from Mexico to the SH.BA when a border guard, looking at his German passport, began bombing him with questions.
The 25-year-old tourist, who had traveled with his American fiancé, was handcuffed, was questioned and then questioned for hours. He spent 16 days in custody before being escorted to the airport and was allowed to fly back to Germany earlier this month.
“I still have a nightmare (for the experience) and I’m not in normality again,” Sielaff told the Financial Times. “I’m trying to process everything properly. It will take a while.”
Sielaff, who had a valuable visa removal permit and had visited the US several times earlier, is one by one a series of high -profile European and Canadian tourists to suffer hostile treatment in the hands of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Others have included Becky Burke, a Welsh backbone who was arrested for 19 days. Her parents complained that she was sent to the airport for expulsion “in foot chains, waist chains and handcuffs” after being accused of traveling with the wrong visa. “She’s not Hannibal Lecter,” her father Paul Burke told BBC.
Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney said she felt like she was kidnapped and forced to participate in “a crazy kind … Psychological, social experiment”. She spent 12 days in custody after trying to renew a expired work visa on a border.
The apparent change has led some nations to change their travel councils and have caused a rage in internet travel forums if it is safe to go to the US
“Day every day I am calling from citizens, visa holders, immigrants and travelers,” said David Leopold, chairman of the UB Greensfelder Migration Group. “There is a great concern there … The administration is creating an atmosphere that is very restrictive for immigrants and even visitors and tourists.”
Published cases of banning and expulsion are part of a “more aggressive implementation” model at the border since the beginning of Trump’s second presidency in January, according to Noor Zafar, a staff lawyer in the American Union of Civil Freedoms.
Immigration lawyers said, while some nationalities have long been the subject of expanded control, any non-citizen who arrives at the US now has to expect more questions than they were previously accustomed.
No rules have officially changed for most visitors, said Ted Chiappari, head of the Duane Morris Duane Immigration Law Group. But he warned that the discretion of border officers was “applied otherwise”.
In some of the latest cases the titles have made, it seems that there have been at least some legal grounds for US authorities to operate.
Sielaff, the German tourist, believes his toil may have stemmed from a misunderstanding caused by language issues. He said he had mistakenly said that he lived in Las Vegas, instead of staying there temporarily, bringing the border guard to believe he was living in the country illegally.
American immigration and customs implementation did not respond to a comment request.
In some cases, US authorities have been accused of acting with worse motives. The French government last week claimed an academic who was traveling at a conference in Houston was denied entering the US to express critical views on Trump in messages to friends and colleagues on his cell phone.
The US Department of Interior rejected that suggestion, claiming that the academic had violated a non-discovery agreement by possessing confidential information from the National Los Alamo lab, which carries out sensitive scientific research.
Many countries have responded to shift by updating their travel advice. The United Kingdom noted the US Border Authorities “established and enforcing the rules of entry strictly” and warned passengers “may be responsible for arresting or prohibiting if (they) violate the rules”.
Some European countries also issued specific warnings for transgender tourists amid concerns that Trump’s executive order required federal agencies to recognize only two genders – male and female – can cause problems with their travel documents.
Germany and Denmark specifically advised travelers whose gender in their passport does not match what is assigned at birth, or using gender “X”, to contact their local US embassy before travel.
This increase in such warnings could damage the US tourism and hospitality sector, which made up about 11 percent of the US jobs and contributed $ 2.36TN to the economy last year, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.
“Travelers are already in a stressful situation and they don’t want anything to make that ride tougher,” said Marta Soligo, an expert in the tourism industry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “People are seriously wondering if they have to travel to the US, and this is a big concern for the industry.”
Roland Lescure, a French member of Parliament representing French citizens living in North America, said some immigrants are also reconsidering their decision to live throughout the Atlantic. He conducted a recent study that found that about 19 percent had doubts.
Lescure said the message of the last few weeks was that travelers had to be increasingly careful about crossing the American border. He warned: “The free and brave house is turning into something very different.”
