Americans do not understand how much press there is outside the US about tourists from Ireland / Germany / Canada getting locked up in ICE jails for weeks on end.

It's one thing to refuse entry to someone who doesn't have the right documents. The fear goes to a completely different level once people see tourists getting locked up.

As someone who lived in the US for 22 years legally and most of my social and business network there, I an not taking the risk of getting locked up in ICE jail any time soon, no matter how unlikely it is.

Exactly this. If someone from "high tier" countries like Canada and Germany can get locked up in ICE jails for several weeks imagine someone like me from a peripheral European country. Even worse, my youngest brother that has a more "tanned" appearance. tattoos, and a beard.

I won't be visiting the US for the foreseeable future (used to go several times per year for work), just not worth the risk.

I think the news feeds within the US may be approximately equal in their delivery of "this is good change" versus "this is catastrophic change", whilst internationally it's almost entirely "this is catastrophic change" with minor pockets of intolerance apologia.

I'd be interested in alternate viewpoints since I may be in a bleeding-heart, empathetic, progressive, consequence-considering news bubble.

My reasoning is that a family member who lives in the US said that they feel protected / insulated because they're in a deep blue state. I don't feel this is representative of reality, or at least they should be more alarmed than they sounded.

Exactly.

Americans generally don't understand the degree to which the rest of the world gets the CNN 5min recap of what's going on in the US, and it's very much the CNN recap and not the Fox one.

"Tourists locked up, school children shot, government defunded, California on fire, tune in at 11 for more".

The fact that ~half the country doesn't think ICE should be locking up tourists without good reason and the other ~half doesn't think ICE should be locking up anyone gets skipped.

When you are in stuck in a border control jail for 2 weeks it does not particularly matter who does or does not think you should be there.

assuming your point is correct about what almost the entire country thinks about ICE locking up tourists (and I don't it is) it's irrelevant: ICE does it anyway and that's all I as a potential turist care about

There’s no reason to lock tourists up. If you don’t want them put them on the first flight back. Locking people up is expensive and if they’re willing to leave anyway, totally pointless.

You would think that a country with a whole department devoted to government efficiency could work that out.

Yep. Last time I went to the US I made a mistake with my visa and was briefly detained. it could totally happen to me again, so I'd need a really good reason to run that risk again.

"Detained" as in sent to secondary inspection, or actually arrested?

Flying from the EU to the US isn’t cheap, and the thought of potentially being denied entry (or worse) makes me think it's best not to visit again for another four years.

It's not even about being locked up in an ICE jail.

In Australia, we just had someone [1] who was detained for 8 hours with their phone/laptop searched all because they stopped over in Hong Kong rather than flying direct to the US.

It's that kind of irrational, unpredictable behaviour that makes travellers stay away and instead choose from one of the hundreds of other desirable travel destinations who want you to visit.

[1] https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/travel-news/an-australian-w...

Just the trade stuff, Trump's childish threats to allies.

People don't realize how much good will is being toss aside.

If non-US citizens can be deported to El Salvador without due process for having a tattoo that an ICE officer deems to be "gang-related", you're immediately going to alienate most of the World's population from wanting to visit for any purpose.

The lack of due process and the threat of extradition on a whim is one that feels less likely to happen to me as a caucasian with US citizens as family, but the impact of it would be life-changingly poor. I'd rather just not travel to the US, for tourism, family or business reasons.

I'm not sure anything done in the last 3 months is much of a surprise to people who listened to his campaign talking points. It seems to me that people just thought he was a lying politician who lies, and this was just more lying. What's caught people out is that he's doing it all, and believes SCOTUS will never condemn or find illegal a thing he has done so due process is an abstract concept only, and others consider themselves immune for actions covered by Exec Order.

It's all quite sad and worrying.

> And I rolled it over 30 days to be able to show any recent changes while not getting lost in the noise of daily change.

small thing, but learned at work that often there's a weekly pattern (and I'd bet there is for airplane travel) so you ought use a rolling 7 day average instead of 30 because there are different numbers of weekends in each day's 30 day number.

This is why there's a slight zigzag in the line charts in the article.

Or use 28 days ? If we need to average both weekly and monthly trends

yep typically rolling 28 days is used for “monthly” metrics for this reason

Same here. Canceled my plans for US visits for the near future. Absolutely zero desire to have part in that. Will spend my money elsewhere.

Act crazy and people stop coming to your house.

For a lot of people a certain level of crazy was the thing that made the US interesting.

I make an effort to avoid and me mindful/critical or news/culture war stuff but at the same time.

I’ve got this instinctive vibe that now is not the best time to be visiting the US.

After several tourists were detained for weeks in terrible conditions, it’s little wonder why

ICE statements about detention say it's supposed to be non-punitive, but clearly it's punishing for the detained. Lots of people get detained for what are actually civil violations or even just suspicion of civil violations, not crimes. We really need a new system. People shouldn't be locked up for more than 24 hours until they've seen a judge, and I imagine in many cases, lockup could be avoided entirely with a court summons (which if violated would justify arrest).

>I imagine in many cases, lockup could be avoided entirely with a court summons (which if violated would justify arrest).

This goes for most arrests, probably damn near all of them when it comes to nonviolent crimes.

I'm an EU citizen who's on the organizer team of Elm Camp 2025, and I'm really on the fence whether to even risk the flight to US and attending, hearing these stories :(

Finally the Republicans have done something good to help fight climate change. Less flights, less jet fuel exhaust.

Canadian airlines are cutting routes to the US due to low demand, but adding new routes to places like Europe and Mexico.

I like the thought process but seriously people will just travel to other places.

Not necessarily the same distance. For example if you consider academia, the center of gravity of "serious" "western world" universities that can reasonably be visited has shifted considerably towards Europe now.

People are still travelling, just not to the newest oligarchy.

The US used to be the coolest place I'd do anything to visit growing up. In the last decade or so it's become way more unattractive and not worth the effort compared to alternatives.

Remember that many (most?) people coming from Canada go thru US immigration there, so these numbers (from US airports) likely represent non-Canadian visitors.

With so many fewer people coming the ratio of fliers to immigration people is going to be lower, chance of getting hassled is going to be that much higher.

Personally I'm unlikely to return while these stories of bad things happening to people at the border continue

(this isn't a new thing, in particular because the US has no exit processing infrastructure - people get tagged as overstaying even though they've left, get popped into detention when they return - always keep your boarding passes when you leave).

> I went to the CBP’s Average Wait Time website and found a rich dataset

Its days are counted now that they know about its existence.

Might be worth telling the tourist harassment department at the border to not behave like the gestapo?

APIS I-92 data is a way better source. Includes all the airports, not just top 8: https://www.trade.gov/us-international-air-travel-statistics...

The latest month available is still February though.

Flying to NY for a long weekend was a thing. Now people here only say it sarcastically.

>This newsletter doesn’t delve into politics, and the reason for this change is both pretty obvious and not in need of further discussion here.

Can someone state the obvious for me please?

The two thoughts in my head were "this is because tourism is down" and "this is because migrants/asylum seekers aren't crossing the border at the moment".

I would think you'd draw different conclusions if it's one or the other, but, regarding the latter, I don't know how many of them cross the border at the border and how many typically do it with a plane ticket.

A general sense that the US is trying actively trying to hurt us in the rest of the world. Enabling Putin, stopping USAID programs, imposing tariffs etc. the list is long by now. Just makes you not feel like supporting it by buying US or going there and spending money. Secondly lots of stories about tourists being detained by ICE make it feel even almost scary to go.

I've cancelled my planned visits outside of the US for fear of being unwelcome and fear of difficulty getting back into the US.

I'm waiting to see the effects of the brain drain

the people who've stopped coming are the ones you want coming too

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Me, can I come in?

I don't know, come in and we'll find out.

...ok

WHAT THE HELL WHY DID YOU COME IN YOU'RE NOT WELCOME HERE

...sorry but you said-

I DON'T CARE WHAT I SAID.

...OK fine I'll just be leaving.

OH YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST LEAVE? YOU CANT LEAVE! You'll be locked in my dank basement for the next five days while I fill out the paperwork for you to be dragged out of the house!

But I just said I'm willing to leave voluntarily!

You have cooked yourself

russians will make up the shortfall comrade

I mean it's not surprising. US Immigration seems to have been told to reject whoever they feel like, interrogate for hours in hopes of finding anything no matter how random to deny entry.

https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/travel-news/an-australian-w...

So, less greenhouse gases?

People might choose to fly somewhere else instead though, so it doesn't necessarily reduce the overall amount of carbon emissions from air travel. Especially if you see Europeans deciding to go somewhere else in the Americas instead, which I've heard some of my friends considering. Although if Europeans choose to travel within Europe instead then yes we'd see a reduction as the distances are rather shorter (and with any luck some of them would go by rail)

Trump thought of that so now he is also singlehandedly starting a global depression to ensure nobody will be traveling at all. Truly he has done more for the climate than Gretha.

On the point of air travel specifically, Canadians are being advised to use airports over land borders because if you are denied entry at U.S. customs at a Canadian airport, they cannot detain you as you are on Canadian soil.

So for Canadians still travelling to the U.S. it might actually increase their carbon footprint.

until the airlines reduce flights, the planes still fly, just emptier

What's the frequency by which airlines rebalance their flight schedule (including e.g. code sharing)

Or more, if Canadians travel to Europe instead of the US

if you need to eat and decide not to go to your usual restaurant for whatever reason... do you stop eating altogether?

No but if your usual is maguro, you're definitely cutting back on your greenhouse footprint.

>Countries all over the world are issuing US travel warnings.

Can you post the plain text of these "travel warnings"?