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
Chapter 1: Who is Sean Rameswaram and what is the episode about?
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.
Megan Rapinoe here. This week on A Touch More, we are launching our much-anticipated book club, and we're doing it with Abby Wambach and Glennon Doyle, who will introduce their upcoming book, We Can Do Hard Things, Answers to Life's 20 Questions. Plus, we've got some fun and important updates from The W and the NWSL, and of course, we've got a new Are You a Megan or Are You a Sue?
Check out the latest episode of A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.
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.
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Chapter 2: What are recent immigration enforcement actions at U.S. universities?
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.
Chapter 3: How does the Trump administration approach deportations and immigration policy?
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 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.
We had one in the South recently. We demand Dr. Suri's release. Free Badr Khan Suri.
Free Badr 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
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Chapter 4: Do visa holders have First Amendment rights in the U.S.?
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...
You know, in the past, often what an officer would have done is say, OK, 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. Yeah.
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 that just demand to come to the United States, be it for for some nice spring tourism or to visit family, you know, going down?
Yeah, I think one of the big issues is not just this sort of uptick in detentions, which is scary enough, but people who are coming out of detention, you 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 poorer 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 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 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.
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Chapter 5: What happens to people detained at U.S. points of entry and airports?
Chapter 6: Are international students targeted for political activities in the U.S.?
Visa holders and even some green card holders have fewer First Amendment rights than we do. And the Supreme Court, you know, 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 otherwise. 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 a 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...
You know, in the past, often what an officer would have done is say, OK, 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.
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Chapter 7: Can Customs and Border Protection legally search your phone at U.S. borders?
Chapter 8: How are recent immigration policies affecting international visitors and scientists?
And which role player is about to become a household name? With so many fascinating first-round matchups, will the West be the bloodbath we anticipate? Will the East be as predictable as we think? Can the Celtics defend their title? Can Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard push the young teams at the top?
I'll be bringing the expertise to pass and the genuine opinion you need for the most exciting time of the NBA calendar. Small Ball is your essential companion for the NBA postseason. Join me, Kenny Beecham, for new episodes of Small Ball throughout the playoffs. Don't miss Small Ball with Kenny Beecham. New episodes drop in through the playoffs.
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Today explains Sean Rama's firm 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 U.S. And when we're talking about the border here, it's not just the physical perimeter of the U.S., but airports or ports of entry can also count as the border for purposes of this discussion.
We asked Nicole Nerea 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's 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.
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