Today, Explained - Not Coming to America

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Traveling to the United States is getting tricky, but there are ways to be careful. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh and Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Further reading: How worried should legal immigrants be about Trump’s deportations? Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Signs and flowers on a tree near where ICE agents apprehended Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk. Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli? He's like, you know, the closest thing we have to a living Walt Disney. Not a big fan of AI. When someone years ago showed him an AI animation, he responded, I feel like we are nearing the end times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves. That did not stop the internet from posting AI generated versions of themselves and just about everything else

in Studio Ghibli style last week and the White House even got in on the action. Their contribution was a Studio Ghibli style version of a real life photo of a woman crying while being arrested by an immigration officer. That comes after a bunch of other White House deportation memes including a Valentine's Day poem threatening illegal entries with deportation and a post of an ASMR video of a deportation flight. Trump too is trying to do the most on immigration, the illegal kind but also the legal kind. That's ahead on Today Explained. Craft is where function meets style.

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Learn more at Acura.com. Craft is where function meets style. It's where precision meets performance. It's where doing it yourself meets showing the world what you're capable of. The all-new Acura ADX is a compact SUV crafted to take you where you need to go without any compromises. With available Google built-in, all-wheel drive, and a 15-speaker bang and all-of-some premium sound system,

the all-new ADX is crafted to be as alive to the world's possibilities as you are. The all-new ADX, crafted to match your energy. Acura, precision crafted performance. Learn more at Acura.com. You're listening to Today Explained. Michelle Hackman writes about immigration for The Wall Street Journal. Lately, that's meant writing about people who are here illegally, sure, but also people who are here totally legally. We asked her how to make sense of all that.

The way that you have to understand what's going on overarchingly is that Trump promised a mass deportation, right? He talked about this all through the campaign. Starting on day one, I will seal the border and stop the migrant invasion into our country. We will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of the United States. He promised huge numbers he was going to go after 15 million people, 20 million people.

And from my perspective, he's not meeting that goal. And one way that he's making up for it is by going for these really big flashy displays that are going to catch a lot of attention and scare people. That's basically what they're designed to do. So it's essentially like vibes, like he wants the vibes to be we are resetting the conversation on deportations. Right. Is it happening across the country? It seems like it's been focused on East Coast universities and points of entries, but what's the broad picture look like? I think we're seeing deportations up everywhere. And even the university crackdown, I mean,

for sure, you've got to understand that this administration is gleeful about targeting some of the nation's most prestigious universities. But we've seen that crackdown, particularly on universities spread. I mean, we had an arrest in Minnesota. What stood out to me was the lack of information. We don't know. We don't know where the student is. We don't know the student's name. We just don't know what happened.

And without- We had one in the South recently. We demand Dr. Suri's release. Free Bader Khan Suri. Free Bader Khan Suri. So I think it's much broader than just sort of the few cases that people are hearing about in the news. I think that one of the big things that they're doing,

and it's a multi-pronged thing, is that they're going after these international students who allegedly participated in pro-Palestine protests. The Trump administration would say they specifically were doing things that supported Hamas. If you go apply for a visa right now anywhere in the world, let me just send this message out. If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student and you tell us that the reason why you're coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are

involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus. We're not going to give you a visa. There was a recent incident with a Tufts University grad student where all she did was write a sort of well-reasoned op-ed in the school newspaper. Video obtained by NBC News shows her being detained Tuesday by six federal agents not wearing uniforms and masked, telling her they are the police and taking her away. And there was no allegation that she has violated any law whatsoever.

There was another Iranian grad student, I believe in Alabama, who actually, you know, his friends and colleagues told the news that he didn't even participate in any kind of protest, that he was just kind of keeping his head down. And so it's not even clear what his sort of link was to this whole crackdown. University of Alabama student Ali Reza DarRudy was detained off campus earlier this week according to the National Iranian American Council. After being held at the Pickens County Jail, he has now been transferred to the ICE Processing Center in Louisiana.

Today, his attorney told us he has no information that DeRudy presents a threat to national security. David Rozaal said he has not been arrested for any, nor has he participated in any anti-government protests. And I think in these cases, it's like most striking because people assume that these are students exercising their First Amendment rights as residents of this country. Do students who are here on visas not have First Amendment rights? I think it's an open question, Sean. I mean, I think people definitely feel like it violates their understanding of the First Amendment and their understanding of what sort of American

civil society is and should be like. But legally, it's actually a much more complicated question than you would think. I've looked into this and yes, it's true. Visa holders and even some green card holders have fewer First Amendment rights than we do. The Supreme Court, a very long time ago in the 1950s has said, you can't always just use the First Amendment to try to fight a deportation. The government actually can potentially deport you because it doesn't like what you're saying. And so, you know, it could be that the Supreme Court will decide, yeah, that was correct. Or they could come back and decide, no, I think in this country, you know, people have

the right to freedom of speech and freedom of protest. But I think we genuinely don't know right now. Hmm. And we haven't seen any American citizens being picked up for, I don't know, speaking their mind, right? Like, this has been relegated to people who hold visas? That's right. That's right. It has been targeted at foreigners. Exactly. Okay. What about all the people who are getting detained at points of entry? Yeah. So the thing that I've observed, you know, we've seen this uptick recently in people

having issues with their visas when they're flying into the country. From everything I've seen, a lot of these people are the types of people who maybe would have even had an issue while Biden was president or under previous administration, but their treatment is sort of much worse than it would have been in a past administration. And that's catching people's attention. And the way I'm thinking about it is we're trying to bring up our arrests and our deportations. We're trying to show, we being the Trump administration, they're trying to show that they're taking sort of any kind of immigration violation seriously.

And so they've told officers at airports, be aggressive, look for any violations. If you find a violation, in the past, often what an officer would have done is say, okay, we're going to let you into the country, but you need to fix your papers and be back here in a week with your fixed papers. Or possibly even, we're going to cancel your visa

and we're going to put you in court proceedings, and you have a court date in two months, you better be there. Now they're just throwing people in ICE detention indefinitely. And that's surely having an effect on how many people want to come to this country right now, be they from Russia, or Western Europe, or South America, or Asia. Do we have numbers that suggest that just demand to come to the United States, be it for some nice spring tourism or to visit family going down?

Yeah, I think one of the big issues is not just this uptick in detentions, which is scary enough, but people who are coming out of detention, there know, there was a recent spate and to me it seems honestly kind of random, but it was three separate Germans who got detained at either airports or other ports of entry who then came out and said, I was treated horribly. I was handcuffed. I was shackled. I was held inside for days and I was begging, you know, let me buy my own plane ticket. They wouldn't let me leave. This is the sort of thing that I think frankly, people who are coming from poor countries or you know, people who maybe have crossed the border illegally face all the time. But when it happens to, you know, a German tourist or a Canadian, and it's something they're really not used to, those people sort of understand

that if they go to the media, it's going to cause a stir. And so that's, that's sort of what's happening. And even though we don't have actual numbers of people sort of canceling tickets to come to America, that is the talk everywhere. I mean, tourists, the German government is is actually investigating what's going on. I'm hearing from my colleagues that in scientific circles, scientists are saying, we maybe need to leave the country, or foreign scientists are saying, I don't know if I'm going to go to America

to collaborate with these colleagues. That seems kind of scary right now. One lawyer I spoke to who actually represents a bunch of universities, he said, as the odds go, it's still really, really unlikely that if you're coming into the country with a visa, you're gonna be targeted. But he's also saying, am I telling people

to be more careful? Absolutely. They are looking for any excuse to get you and they're gonna search all of your paperwork. They're gonna take your phone, browse through your phone, look at your deleted photos. And so he's saying you've got to be squeaky clean because if they find anything, the likelihood that they'll target you is much higher.

Hackman, Michelle, Journal, Wallstreet.com, WSJ. Next, coming up, how to maybe make your life a little easier when you're trying to enter the United States. This is advertiser content from NerdWallet. It's quite a miraculous job that the brain is doing. Literally your brain is changing physically when you're forming a memory. And that takes a lot of work. That's Leila Devachi, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Columbia University, who studies how memory works. While our brains can store a mind-blowing amount of data,

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world what you're capable of. The all-new Acura ADX is a compact SUV crafted to take you where you need to go without any compromises. With available Google built-in all-wheel drive and a 15-speaker bang and all of some premium sound system, the all-new ADX is crafted to be as alive to the world's possibilities as you are. The all-new ADX, crafted to match your energy. Acura, precision crafted performance. Learn more at Acura.com. Today explains Sean Ramos from American, but let's just say I know some Canadians. In fact, I know a whole bunch of them who tried to enter the United States last week,

and before they did, they were going through their phones, deleting stuff, group chats, DMs, the memes, which had us wondering, can customs and border protection legally search your phone? Basically, yes. CBP agents can search your phone at the border. Your rights, both as an immigrant and as an American citizen, are different at the border than they are in the mainland US. And when we're talking about the border here, it's not just the physical perimeter of the US, but airports or ports of entry can also count as the border for purposes of this discussion.

We asked Nicole Norea at Vox, who's been writing about what to know when you're entering the United States. Yes, so I'd say that the legal regime on this is a little murky in that, you know, there's kind of a patchwork of rulings across the country on this particular subject. But yes, as of now, the Supreme Court has been pretty reluctant to weigh in on this issue, which means that CBP agents have been allowed to go search

through people's phones. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, when an international traveler is going through customs, they can be referred for a secondary inspection with or without any suspicion of wrongdoing. So citizens, permanent residents, and visa holders also all need to understand that if there are any suspicions about them, that their devices, including their computers and their cell phones, could be checked. And they can go through all of the information in your electronic devices, everything that's

not connected to the internet. The circumstances under which they can do so are different in different places, but for the purpose of sort of all of our listeners, I think you should go and prepared for CBP to request access to your phone. Whether you decide to give them that access is a question that you might want to consult with an immigration attorney on. But we can get into sort of, I guess, like what the sort of considerations are there. And before we do, let me ask you, what do we know is happening with people and their

phones? I've heard various things from friends who are trying to come into this country from say, I don't know, Canada. Canada is absolutely one of the worst. Who are worried that something might happen to their phones. So I heard if you disable Face ID, they can't have you punch in your numbers so you couldn't just say you're not gonna do it. I've heard of people deleting all of their group chats where there are Trump memes or

jokes about the president. Everything's computer. I've heard of people leaving their personal phones at home when traveling abroad. Even people who are American citizens just traveling with their work phones. Like what is going on thus far? So it's really hard to tell. In general, these kinds of searches have been pretty rare in the past, but we don't really know how common they have become under the Trump administration.

There definitely have been these isolated reports of people's phones being searched, perhaps in more invasive ways than we thought was possible before. So we're talking about CBP officers going through people's social media accounts or going through their text messages. A French scientist was denied entry

into the United States earlier this month. The scientist's phone contained messages opposing the Trump administration. There was a German citizen who reported, you know, being denied entry. She spoke to me from the detention center where she's now been for over a month. The 29-year-old says she spent over a week

in solitary confinement. Just time to get to Brown, you know? There was a professor at Brown University. The Justice Department says officers found photos and videos on her cell phone pertaining to Hezbollah. Authorities canceled her visa and deported her back to Lebanon. So in some contexts, a lot of this could be considered political speech, but it seems that especially like under Trump now, we're in a very sort of murky legal situation now

about what is considered protected speech and on what grounds really this administration is trying to remove people or deny them entry to the US. So very uncertain environment right now. Do we know if you just don't have a phone, if that makes you like more suspicious or less suspicious? Because I mean, everyone has a phone now, but like one surefire way to not get in trouble for what's on your phone is to obviously not travel with your phone.

But is that just like a red flag, like someone traveling without a suitcase after 9-11 or something like that? Yeah. So I think this is like where we get into the considerations, right? So from what I've been reading and from speaking to immigration attorneys, yeah, it can be a bit of a red flag just to not have a phone on you, or alternatively, like you're taking your personal phone and wiping it back to factory settings before you travel. That can also look a little weird. So I think, you know, some people have

taken the tactic of deleting apps that might have really like delicate personal information on them. But you have to also make sure that they're permanently deleted because there's sort of deleting apps that might have really like delicate personal information on them. But you have to also make sure that they're permanently deleted, because there's sort of a recently deleted folder on a lot of phones. So yeah, those are kind of considerations and risks you might want to take. But it is worth noting that usually in these inspections, there's different layers of inspections that can occur. But in the most basic one, which is typically the one that we're seeing people go through, that does not require a warrant, CBP officers can't access cloud data. So they will ask you to turn off your Wi-Fi, put your phone on airplane mode before engaging in the search.

Because courts have ruled so far that they can't access cloud-based data. But that could be subject to change in the future. So interesting. Okay, well then based on what else we know, what else do we know people can do to safeguard their shit? Yeah, so I mean, again, you can consider not traveling with your personal devices. Oh, sorry. I thought you were going to say don't travel at all.

And I was like, bummer, sorry. I thought you were going to say don't travel at all. And I was like, bummer, man. Immigration attorneys right now are saying maybe reconsider travel. There's been a few universities that employ a lot of like foreign professors or students, and they're saying don't travel out of the country right now, especially given that there could be a travel ban coming up. The Trump administration is considering a new travel ban on the citizens of more than 43 countries due to policy and security reasons, according to officials familiar with the planning. This ban includes three tiers,

red, orange, and yellow. Citizens in the 11 countries listed in the red tier would not be allowed to enter the US until it's lifted. So, you know, if you're planning to travel to those countries or travel through those countries or are from those countries, it might not be a great time to travel. Otherwise, I think, you know, there are precautionary measures that you can take here around, you know, disabling face ID if you're a U.S. citizen even, because that will make it harder for people to get into your phone in these situations. For immigrants in particular,

you have to make a decision about whether you want to submit your phone in these situations. For immigrants in particular, you have to make a decision about whether you want to submit your phone for review. So you can technically deny CBP access to your phone, let's say, if you've disabled face ID and you don't want to give them your passcode. But that also comes across as a bit suspicious. And I think CBP can then use that as rationale to say, we don't have enough information here to say

that this person can enter the US and won't pose a threat of some sort. So there's a lot of decisions that people rationale to say, we don't have enough information here to say that this person can enter the US and won't pose a threat of some sort. So there's a lot of decisions that people have to make based on their own personal risk tolerance, but there are measures that people can take right now. Okay, so there's a bunch of measures you could take regarding your device, you know, chief among them, of course, not traveling at all, or certainly maybe not bringing that phone with you with all the JD Vance faces and stuff. What if you're detained? What happens then? So I think this is the point in which you try to consult an immigration lawyer or at

least make sure that you have one on speed dial, have people know that you're traveling any sort of risk you can mitigate there of you being incommunicado in detention, I think, is a good step to take. There might be a scenario where you decide then to sort of withdraw your application for admission to the US and say that you would pay for your flight home. Because from ICE's perspective, that is an expense that they would have to incur and put you on a removal flight. So if you can do that yourself, you might be sparing yourself a lot of heartache. Huh, yeah. So ICE picks up the tab on the removal flight though. That's nice. How generous of them, I guess.

So another thing that non-citizens should be considering doing right now is carrying their identification documents everywhere they go. But I think this also, to some extent, applies to citizens, because there have been reports of CBP agents and ICE agents potentially engaging in racial profiling, racial and ethnic profiling, and cases where citizens have been detained for a period of time before they were later released and verified to be a citizen. And that seems like really horrible advice to have to give. to give. So I just want to like take a minute to acknowledge that. But this is what immigration attorneys are telling me that, you know, even citizens might consider carrying a passport card, which is something that you can request. It fits in your wallet and is pretty easy to keep there because of some of these incidents. So for legal citizens, is there less of a concern when I don't know, you're traveling

back into the United States from a trip, to Mexico City that, like, the joke that your brother sent you in your Instagram DMs is going to get you in trouble with the US government? Yes, but also— Is anything sacred? I don't know, Sean. I think we're at a point now where, you know, these detentions of people based on what many lawyers believe is protected speech is endangering the First Amendment for everyone. And I think that for that reason, like, it

seems like a bit of a slippery slope right now. And as a US citizen, I am very concerned about those developments. Will it stop me from traveling? I don't know. But it's a very scary environment right now. And I think that it's worth acknowledging that this is not just affecting immigrants, but it really is eroding all of our rights. But ultimately, I guess this is a bit of a win for the Trump administration because they don't want people coming here. And ultimately, this will probably chill people's desire to come to the United States, right? Yeah, 100%.

I mean, I think we're seeing some academics leaving US universities on this basis, but I also think it could be bad for them in some respects. I mean, right now, voters really aren't happy with Trump's performance on the economy and we're seeing tourism numbers dropping from many of these countries. So I think that could be a big factor here. You know, is this going to kill tourism, international tourism to the U.S.? And I think that is maybe true. I will say I live in Washington, D.C., as you know, and it is peak cherry blossom season

right now. And it does not appear to have killed peak cherry blossom tourism. But who knows by this summer what we'll see, I guess. Yeah, I know that the volume of flights being booked is down from certain countries, including Canada. Canada is absolutely one of the worst. We'll see if that trend holds, but maybe for your sake, if it's really busy in DC, it's a good thing.

No, I love the tourists. Bring it on. NicoleNoreaVox.com, Hadi Mawwagdi and Amanda Llewellyn made our show today, Jolie Myers edited it, Laura Bullard fact checked it, André Christensdorcher and Patrick Boyd mixed it. It's today explained. Thanks for watching!