Visitors to U.S. Take Extreme Precautions as Trump Continues March of Fascism

The European Commission has started issuing burner phones and stripped-down laptops to staff visiting the U.S. over concerns that the treatment of visitors to the country has become a security risk, according to a new report from the Financial Times. And it’s just the latest news that America’s slide into fascism under Donald Trump is having severe consequences for the United States’ standing in the world, all while the president announced Monday that he has no plans to obey a U.S. Supreme Court order to bring back a man wrongly sent to a prison in El Salvador.

Officials who spoke with the Financial Times said that new guidance for EU staff traveling to the U.S. included recommendations they not carry personal phones, turn off their burner phones when entering the country, and have “special sleeves” (presumably Faraday cages), that can protect from electronic snooping. U.S. border agents often confiscate phones and claim the right to look through anyone’s personal devices before they can be allowed to enter the U.S.

There have been several reports of researchers denied access to the U.S., including a French scientist who was reportedly stopped last month for having text messages that were critical of Trump. Other travelers from countries like Australia and Canada have reported being detained in horrendous conditions.

President Trump has been in office for less than three months but has already managed to alienate all of America’s closest allies. Sometimes that alienation has come in the form of threats to invade sovereign territory, like in Canada, Greenland, and Panama. Other times, it’s more of a blanket “fuck you” to America’s geopolitical allies with threats of tariffs. And at the border, horror stories emerge daily of people trying to enter the U.S. and being abused in ways they hadn’t been before Trump took power again in January.

All of that turmoil and uncertainty has forced people who previously would’ve welcomed a trip to the U.S. into rethinking their plans. Many researchers in Australia have decided it’s no longer smart to travel to the U.S., given the rise of fascism that could endanger their own health and well-being. The Society for Social Studies of Science decided to turn its own conference into a hybrid in-person and remote event, according to the Guardian, given the threat Trump poses to personal liberty. People are being monitored for their disabilities at the U.S. border, according to the Guardian, and border agents are checking medications, ostensibly to see if they match a given disability.

The way that Trump and Elon Musk are currently destroying the U.S. government is also playing into the calculations foreign researchers are making about their interactions with Americans. Countless research grants have been canceled, making a trip to the U.S. unnecessary even for people who may be willing to risk traveling to the country. Even researchers with strong ties to the U.S. are opting to look to other countries for jobs, as Reuters reports, because work is simply drying up.

There are also reports of people outside the U.S. deciding to look elsewhere for vacation opportunities, as the number of flights to the U.S. from places like Europe and Canada plummet. And the Wall Street Journal has a new report about Canadians who are selling their vacation homes in the U.S. as they become “scared of what might happen.”

The U.S. is also trying to deport people in a white nationalist scheme to purge the country of any dissent. Several international students have been kidnapped by masked secret police in recent weeks, including people like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, pro-Palestine protesters who are currently sitting in ICE detention facilities. Ozturk’s only “crime” was writing an op-ed for her student newspaper opposing Israel’s war on Gaza and she was picked up off the street near her home outside Boston and flown to Louisiana. The Trump regime has said it locked up Ozturk and is preparing to deport her for “antisemitism,” and supporting Hamas, but the Washington Post reported Sunday that the State Department’s investigation found she did no such thing.

Trump appeared for a press availability in the White House with El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele on Monday, where he made it clear that he’s going to continue shipping people who’ve committed no crime out of the country to El Salvador’s torture prisons. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the U.S. government needs to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who Trump falsely accuses of being a member of the MS-13 gang, but the U.S. president made it clear he has no plans to bring Garcia back.

Trump insisted that he couldn’t tell Bukele what to do by asking him to return Garcia from the CECOT prison in El Salvador, and Bukele was asked directly whether he would do that. Bukele falsely accused Garcia of being a “terrorist” and said he wouldn’t return the innocent man.

Trump also said Monday that he’d like to deport American citizens to El Salvador, insisting that he actually wants Bukele to build five more prisons where the U.S. could disappear more people.

The U.S. is in an extremely dangerous place as a country, given the history of how fascist leaders often progress. American citizens face being disappeared for advocating on issues that were previously considered protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And visitors to the U.S. have even fewer rights than Americans.

It makes a lot of sense that people with any choice in the matter would avoid traveling to the U.S., given its decline. And with all of the guardrails that were keeping Trump in check during his first term now long gone, it’s going to be a very difficult situation in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. Many people need to travel to the U.S. for work or family obligations. But it seems anyone who can help it should steer clear of the country for the foreseeable future. Things are bound to get much, much worse before they get any better.