Are you going to the USA? Just make sure you've not said anything nasty about Trump or your phone might get searched and you won't be allowed in

[cakeorwine]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-french-scientist-detained

I wonder what he said in his private messages that were looked at when US Border Agents looked at his phone.

“I learned with concern that a French researcher” on assignment for the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) “who was traveling to a conference near Houston was denied entry to the United States before being expelled”, Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, said in a statement on Monday to Agence France-Presse published by Le Monde. “This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy,” the minister added.

"Another AFP source said that US authorities accused the French researcher of “hateful and conspiratorial messages”. He was reportedly also informed of an FBI investigation, but told that “charges were dropped” before being expelled."

Clearly some people might need a burner phone. And be careful of your social media use.

It’s called mob mentality and of course it’s a thing.

I’m Canadian and it’s scary to think how many people will justify his treatment of us.

He could invade our country and people will justify it of call it hyperbole.

No American president has treated the laws and constitution with such blatant disregard.

No doubt the Trump administration's position will be that the band also had stolen, classified materials in their possession.

It sounds like violation of fourth amendment.
The precedent has been that the Constitution applies to everyone, even illegal persons, present on US jurisdiction soil. That's slowly being eroded, and the precedent may yet be cast asidel but not yet for actual citizens.

I'm American citizen. They can't keep me out.

Yes you did

They weren’t. They ware jailed for inciting murder. They just happened to do that on Facebook. It wasn’t that it was a Facebook post that got them imprisoned. It was what they said.

I think that this was posted upthread but I'm going to repost it anyway:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-detained-us-immigration-jasmine-mooney

So a Canadian was detained for two weeks, in dreadful conditions that you would have appalled a Victorian prison reformer. The conditions described probably breach various UN conventions the US is a party to.

When friends and her employer managed to get her case to blow up in the media, the reverse ferretting from ICE started:
My ICE agent, who had never spoken to me, told my lawyer I could have left sooner if I had signed a withdrawal form, and that they hadn’t known I would pay for my own flight home.

Which rather contradicts:
From the moment I arrived, I begged every officer I saw to let me pay for my own ticket home. Not a single one of them ever spoke to me about my case.

Any guesses why this shit is going on? Oh yes, it's the US. The answer is always private profit:
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/executives-private-prison-firm-corecivic-expect-significant-growth/story?id=118758271

I definitely wouldn’t be allowed in.

Oh dear, how sad.

My spouse is in this position of turning down a work trip. The other thing is they may expect you to have a visa, whereas in the past a two or three day work trip wouldn't require a visa.

Some of these officers have quotas to meet as well, and some detentions centres are private with horrible conditions.

Many people are worried about the inconsistency of justice in the UK. Why are some people jailed for what they say and others not?;

freespeechunion.org/no-charges-for-east-london-imams-destroy-jewish-homes-sermon/

No patience left for this. Bullshit. Utter bullshit.

Toby Young has never been arrested, has he?

They did the same last time round. People were sending phones ahead and travelling with temporary phones but then they started demanding social media logins

You are right as an American citizen but foreigners on a visa have literally zero rights before they're cleared for entry.

You are absolutely allowed to take business meetings on an ESTA. The ESTA does not allow for PERMANENT work but it allows for business trips. However, it's now sensible to print the terms and conditions of your ESTA and proof of its status just in case.

And to add: what you cannot do on an ESTA is the digital nomad thing when you decide to work from a US location for a foreign employer for no good reason. That's not allowed. However if you have business meetings or a conference/work event to attend that is absolutely OK. You just have to have a valid business reason for being in the US. Hope that makes sense.

But how do they know if you are on Facebook / Twitter / Blue Sky / Instagram etc.

Quite. My son emigrated out there 15 years ago when he married an American woman.

He's kept his British nationality, and lives, works and pays taxes out there.

Hes no Trump supporter, but reassuringly, he's never been detained or arrested. 🙄

It's the first time the UK issued a travel warning with the added

'You may be liable to arrest or detention if you break the rules.'

Things have changed

Here's another link to the story seeing as you seemingly want to deflect. Personally, I'm worried about what is going on in the UK with Orwellian "non-crime hate incidents" and the inconsistent way justice is levied.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/21/met-police-claimed-imams-sermon-saying-destroy-jewish-homes/

You are derailing.

Yet. The British husband Riley Gaines can't get a green card because he didn't have documentation /or didn't get the covid vaccine...which is all the more absurd given the maga trumpets seem largely against the vaccines...despite the trumpet himself taking it.

It's worth saying that alot of immigrants also married locals worked paid taxes and have got chucked out despite being married to a local. I suspect though that the identification process might be more about their skin colour or their origins South of the usa border.

You don’t have to give your social media details for an ESTA - it is optional. Just applied for and got my esta very recently without giving them.

Since they tend not to comment on individual cases I doubt we'll ever know what led to a more intensive search, but as PPs have said there'll certainly be more to this than has been presented

It won't stop the media making a complete mares nest out of it though ...

https://www.instagram.com/share/reel/BBo4lxbeXz

Just saw this on instagram. Relevant to this topic.