The teens claimed CBP targeted them because they hadn’t booked hotels for their entire stay in Hawaii.
“They found it suspicious that we hadn’t fully booked our accommodations for the entire five weeks in Hawaii,” Pohl said. “We wanted to travel spontaneously. Just like we had done in Thailand and New Zealand.”
Look at those evil immigrants. No doubt they’ll… they’ll… hold on, can we use some AI to replace the stock photo with brown people? Thank you.
At least they weren’t detained.
CBP told them their entry was denied — and that they would be detained until their deportation.
Both say they were handcuffed and sent to a detention center, which they claimed was more like a prison.
“We were searched with metal detectors, our entire bodies were scanned, and we had to stand naked in front of the police officers and were looked through,” Pohl said. “Then we were given green prison clothes and put in a prison cell with serious criminals.”I see you didn’t read the article which describes the detention in depth?
“We were searched with metal detectors, our entire bodies were scanned, and we had to stand naked in front of the police officers and were looked through,” Pohl said. “Then we were given green prison clothes and put in a prison cell with serious criminals.”
Spoiler: they were detained.
Why would anybody travel to that shithole country?
I guess they learned their lesson.
I think it is sad, I would really like to travel in the USA as I think the nature and the culture are really interesting. But for my entire adult life the USA actually would have been a gamble to travel to.
The laws around entry to the country are also really weird, as the immigration officer that checks your visa has the ultimate authority of whether you are allowed entry. There are no concrete laws that limit their say over this.
Because people booked last year and can’t get a refund.
To anyone who was paying attention this was already a pretty clear possibility last year. Not to mention that all the people voting for this outcome also make it an unpleasant place to visit on a more personal level, even if the election had gone the other way.
You have to understand that there are people who have better things to do with their time than keep up with foreign politics or arrange their lives around it. You could just say nothing and not shit on people who don’t want to lose a thousand dollars because a nation decided to have shit for heads this season.
Well, then they have to face the consequences of not paying attention to the things happening in the place they intend to go to
Like, yeah, ideally you wouldn’t need to worry about this, but this is always a risk when traveling, and politics has that trait of being interested in you whether or not you are interested in it back
People who travel to shitholes like the US for several weeks at the time clearly don’t have “better things to do with their time”.
Ah yeah, that’s fair.
Is losing your non-refundable booking a worse outcome than a few nights in a detention cell?
Holy shit the comments on that article. I know NY Post leans right, but some of them got their noses so far up Trump’s ass they’re snorting small intestine
Oh no! This dastardly Europeans wanted to come here and work! How dare they! Deport them!
This country was cooked a long time ago.
From another story about the event, it wasn’t even like odd jobs for a host, it was small job remote work for people in Germany and Asia. Stuff they would be doing at home and just kept doing during downtime on a long vacation.
Don’t reply to any business emails while lounging by the pool, you need a work visa for that!
They should find someone local and pay them to respond to the emails.
This is a much, much better article. I’m surprised at the NYPost’s shoddy quality (though I don’t know much about them); the headline especially feels misleading. Thanks for sharing a better source.
The NYPost is a crappy conservative tabloid. I don’t know why people keep posting stories from it.
I travelled a lot and never pre booked more than the first night
“But at the time, we didn’t think it was happening to Germans,” Lepere said. “That was perhaps very naïve. We felt so small and powerless.”
They never think it could happen to them until it does. It already happened to Germans months ago tho and there was lots of press coverage, so this case of “i didnt know” is extra odd. I guess people just dont pay attention to actual relevant news.
They were teenagers who had spent the last 5 weeks traveling the world. They probably just didn’t think keeping up with developments in the US was important. That plus a healthy dose of white privilege (and probably a wealthy background given that they were teenagers on a world tour) telling them oppression was something that happens to other people.
Agreed. As a white German woman myself, I can tell you that we are very used to being above any suspicion. I have been waved on in every traffic control and border check I’ve ever been in.
Also the German passport is one of the strongest in the world, we can basically go wherever we want when travelling. And now suddenly the US of all places is a country we have to be cautious in.
This is of course a very privileged position to be in, but they are teenagers, they probably haven’t had to think about that until now.
As far as I know it wasn’t all that widespread news in Germany, at least on the channels I see. Besides, ppl. have a tendency to think that something would never happen to them.
I don’t get it. Why would anyone still travel to the US without being forced to?
I wouldn’t go to USA even if you pay me. To be “mistakenly” deported to El Salvador and then they fucking “don’t know” how to get you out. Fuck no.
I used to say this about 3rd world countries to avoid them, now USA is on that list. Imagine USA being that bad. Well, it is that bad now. When it was under Biden, I wouldn’t even think about it. With this orange baboon, no fucking chance you see me go to USA.
Even before, having to be treated like cattle in their border checks for hours? No thank you.
like didn’t Germany issue a travel warning?
It was explicitly not a travel warning (“don’t go there”) but a note to be aware that an ESTA does not guarantee entry to the US. Because our authorities are lame and still want to avoid looking like they’re somehow opposed to anything the US does.
That’s actually both lame and stupid considering that getting detained by ICE is almost a guarantee
Yeeees but the US is, of course, a VALUED and RELIABLE partner and has been for decades and we, the new German government, look forward to an increasedly productive collaboration with the new Trump government regarding global matters etc. pp. bl. er. gh. 🤮
Almost all Germans entering the US are detained by ICE? They must have a lot of agents on standby for every Lufthansa flight.
There’s a significant amount of the US population who still don’t realise how bad things are, you really expect everyone outside the US to be any better?
I assure you, everyone outside of the US knows how bad the US is… the US is the laughing stock of the world right now. We get daily reminders how shit it is, how shit the economy is, how many mass shootings there were today. The world is fascinated by it, sometimes bored.
In this case with the young travellers, they have probably had the holiday booked for ages. Some people just think it wouldn’t happen to them. These sorts of checks would seem random anyway. These sorts of things appear on near every episode of Border Patrol (in Australia) where someone is being sent home because of lack of funds to sustain their length of stay etc…
Ah yes, the hive mind of all non US citizens sharing the same knowledge.
Well yeah, there are two types of people in the world: Americans and Not-Americans. So these Not-American teenagers would certainly be fully aware of the current political climate in America.
Which bit are you objecting to? If you don’t believe that the US is being portrayed by every news agency (worldwide) as a dumpster fire, you are deluded
You’d be surpised by how many people don’t follow international news.
It’s not just in the news. My husband is a lawyer. He was on a training conference today. Part of it was about how the rule of law needs to be followed and society only works when it is. They then discussed how important it was to upkeep that using America as an example of a government no longer following rule of law. This wasn’t internet memes. This was senior legal minds discussing how American democracy is failing.
Most people aren’t lawyers.
don’t follow international news
… don’t use social media, and don’t talk to anybody that does those things (because it’s basically impossible for it to not enter normal conversation).
Yeah, there certainly exist some people like this. But I doubt they are the ones booking international trips.
… don’t use social media, and don’t talk to anybody that does those things (because it’s basically impossible for it to not enter normal conversation).
Oh, they definitly on social media and talk to people. But that still doesn’t mean you’re exposed to US politics. People have their own domestic politics to talk about. What happens in the US really isn’t as relevant to the daily life of the average foreigner as you might think.
I would guess we as outsiders think it’s worse than it is, hearing only the bad stuff. We’re not hearing about great new sales at bed bath and beyond or whatever, we’re only hearing about the heavy handed deportations and human rights violations. Which is obviously bad but its easy to confuse “probably not as bad as it sounds” with “probably not actually that bad”.
I don’t think I’m communicating the point i was trying to make very well but whatever
I think you’re saying that we/I in the USA still see/have the trappings of normalcy: ads for BB&B, our Amazon packages are still delivered, we still have our treats.
Y’all outside of the USA don’t care about our treats. Y’all’s news is showing all the human rights erosions and ignoring that I got new prescription glasses by mail just 2 business days after ordering them (what a successful and stable country this must be/s!).
(sidenote, maybe prescription glasses aren’t treats, but I’m very excited because my prescription has changed and maybe I will stop with these eye strain headaches)
I assure you, most don’t. Message boards don’t contain mist people
Ok… so why do they still travel to the us? Do they know how bad things are but are just stupid?
tariffs hasnt hit the shelves yet for most people, so they are still ignorant to the situation. also they dont think rfk jrs, autism database will affect them yet.
Read the article - they clearly don’t read the news, and had no idea that other Germans had already been detained.
They might have booked the trip before it was clear it was going to be so bad, and I doubt you can get your money back on a ticket for something like that. They probably rolled the dice and hoped for the best. It’s always been a roulette of whether you’d get a ‘good’ border patrol agent or some guy with a chip on his shoulder. It’s just that the latter feels more empowered now and there’s nobody keeping them in check.
People travel to China because there is nice stuff to see and great food to try. While US doesn’t have the great food they have the nice stuff to see and are still way better than China.
While US doesn’t have the great food
That’s just ignorant. There’s plenty of absolutely fantastic food in the U.S.
I have no idea why anyone would visit us now, but if you manage to get past the fascist scum, there are plenty of amazing places to eat.
They were also going to Hawaii specifically. Now I’m German and have never set foot in any US state but I’d imagine Hawaii as a tropical island group would have its own local cuisine that can’t be half-bad (if you ignore the lack of beer), right?
Pork and pineapple
You forgot the Spam.
Loosely covered under “pork?”
Exaaactly, Toast Hawaii is a staple of any good German Hausfrau. We love that shit.
This masterpiece will confirm to anyone outside of Germany that they’re not joking: Alexander Marcus - Hawaii Toast Song
As a resident of Hawaii, I have no idea what Toast Hawaii is.
Whaaaat you’re telling me toast with a slice of ham, a slice of pineapple and a slice of melted cheese on top ISN’T a centuries old traditional Hawaiian meal? The GIs have misled us!
It even has an English language entry in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_Hawaii
(I am being very unserious :))
and are still way better than China
Oh man, I have news for you. As a UK/Australian citizen I would genuinely feel much more at ease travelling to China tomorrow than the US.
That is not a recent change either.
The US has a very scary reputation worldwide for its psychotic police force and guns everywhere.
I have been to China before, just as a no-fuss tourist. I detected no edge, and had a fun time.
I’d visit China before I visited the US right now.
Ngl right now id rather travel to China. If I dont do anything particularly dumb it looks good for them right now to have normal tourism working, particularly when the US is being this shit.
They just plain don’t even want the tourism money
Having not fully booked your accommodation for the entire trip could get you denied entry to the US before Trump. Just saying. Especially if you aren’t white. Same with not having an outbound ticket.
I’m sure it happens occasionally but I’ve never actually heard of CPB asking for hotel bookings, just outbound flight number. This is stuff you’d submit on a visa application. If the US wants to make Europeans get visa to travel then they should just do that.
They have asked for both and in one case they have asked for bank statement. This happens very often to citizens of third world country. We just knew what to carry with us all the time and no issue.
Not allowed to go camping unless you’re a citizen I guess
Likely they did not have enough fund to stay in Hawaii that long. It becomes a liability.
You just call daddy and get another thousand on your account. This is not hard.
So we just making shit up to make it make sense now?
Well do u know the tourist and their finance to support themselves? U know they can probably go to places like Goa, Sri Lanka. Cheaper imo
With this administration, the most likely thing is another fuckup.
I met a good chunk of Europeans and Aussies while thru hiking on the AT a few years ago.
All of those folks did not have full accommodations booked in advance, that would have been impossible. They seemed to find that pretty normal and were not turned away.
Where you intend to stay is part of the questioning when you enter and they can get quite suspicious if you don’t have a plan. Source: An Austrian, white friend of mine who went to the US. He also just wanted to travel around but was warned in advance (by other, mostly white europeans) that he shouldn’t state that when asked. It’s just not worth the risk.
While that’s not the same as having to show hotel bookings for the whole stay, it is a thing travelers have had to worry about for quite some time now. I’m sure it’s worse and more complicated for anyone of color.
yeah, it is not newsworthy when CBP does their normal, admittedly rather annoying job
of locking teens in detention centers
This. It also gets you denied in Australia and other countries. This is non-news.
Source: Previously my guilty pleasure was watching Border Security Australia Not so much anymore.
Is it that common? How do they handle backpackers?
I’ve literally never gone on a single multi-week vacation in my entire life with fully booked accommodation for the whole thing. I book the majority of the first week and I know when I’m flying back, but in between I’m mostly guided by the wind.
I can’t book hotels in places I don’t know I’ll be going.
It’s not the only thing. It’s a combination of limited/no living accommodations and no income. If you don’t have the income to stay for 5 weeks for example, they will send you back.I’m talking like going to Australia or US with just $500 or something for 5 weeks. I can cite some episodes when I get off work today and you can see the process.
But, people haven’t been bringing money with them for decades now. They use payment cards.
But overall CBP looks at funds. If someone can’t afford their stay, they become suspicious.
EDIT: Adding, they ask how much people intend to spend or call banks to verify
I doubt it’s common. I’ve traveled to Australia and the US (and a bunch of other places) with just a few nights in a hostel booked, sometimes even without a return flight. Might be different if you’ve got a middle eastern name or something like that, but pretty much every backpacker travels this way.
Imagine booking 2 years ahead when you’re on a writing holiday visa, that’s just nuts.
How do people get multi week vacations?
When I started my last job (big multinational corporation) after an internship, I got 3 weeks of paid vacation right off the bat, with 1 more week every few years, up to a maximum of 7 weeks.
Plus 1 more week if I chose to “buy” a week by estimating the vacation I would accrue throughout the remainder of the year and subtracting 1 week’s pay from that.
Double income, single household, no kids. (and even then just barely, i will add)
Or, if you’re talking time wise, live in a country that isn’t run by and for corporations and you can still enjoy some paid time off.
Just book some of your +5 weeks per year together. What, are you American or something?
You get a minimum of 24 days paid vacation in Germany. Up 28 days are common.
A few years back my 19 yo American son had a great experience working the summer as a camp counselor here in the states. It is a religious camp (not that my son is that religion) that draws in campers from the states and Europe. Many of those campers as they get older come back as counselors. They get the appropriate visas, make money working the camp for 8 weeks, then take the few weeks after camp before they have to leave and blow that money on traveling the States and their trip home. It was an incredible experience and inspired my son to bust his ass, save money, and a few years later took a self funded trip to Europe where he couch surfed these homes of the friends he made.
I think about those kids this year. There’s no way I’d risk traveling back to this shit hole country if I were them.
I don’t think it is common. I just know it happens.
The process looks like this..
Sort of a good example because it happens to be a traveler going into the United States for vacation, 5 weeks, 1.5k cash, but still denied entry. They always ask for purpose of entry, what itinery looks like, funds, etc.
There’s tons of backpackers, as a one bagger myself, I’ve never had trouble. I think its when you may have limited/no accommodations plus other factors: stories not lining up, limited funds, no/limited knowledge of itinerary, etc. That gets people in trouble. I think most people know where they are going, what for, and how they are going to do it.
Even as a US citizen I’m happy I’m not traveling internationally for a while though. Seems most people are free game regardless to CBP, citizen or not 🤮
Denied entry is far different than being strip searched and locked up in a jail with serious criminals.
I was responding to the original comment above : “Having not fully booked your accommodation for the entire trip could get you denied entry to the US before Trump. Just saying. Especially if you aren’t white. Same with not having an outbound ticket.”
Not to the strip searching, abuse, etc.
I agree it is absolutely heinous what is happening in the US and I wouldnt travel here either but the process of denying entry for a combination of limited/no accommodations, limited funds, varying answers, etc does lead to denial of entry in some countries.
They’re lucky they were sent home instead of to an El Salvador concentration camp.
They were the right color of skin.
I’ve been seeing a lot of reports lately of white people getting screwed over like this. They all had one thing in common: women traveling without male company.
It likely saved them, but being white still doesn’t guarantee your safety from the US gulags.
are you implying that fascists might not be reliable?
Both say they were handcuffed and sent to a detention center, which they claimed was more like a prison.
“We were searched with metal detectors, our entire bodies were scanned, and we had to stand naked in front of the police officers and were looked through,” Pohl said. “Then we were given green prison clothes and put in a prison cell with serious criminals.”
Among them was someone who had spent 18 years behind bars for murder, the women said, and they were left sleeping in a double cell with tiny barred windows and metal bunks with moldy mattresses.
I really want to know what changed that made the above happen much more often.
In December, if Customs had concerns about two teenagers trying to sneak into the US to work on a travel visa, where did they go? How was it handled? Because it feels like overkill and probably much more expensive than what we used to do.
Why are we sending backpacking teenagers with visa concerns to the same place as a murderer?
Why are they being strip searched like they were drug smugglers?
But the women — who were planning to continue on to Los Angeles and then Costa Rica after Hawaii — insisted they were interrogated by CBP for hours, and that transcripts show their words were “twisted” and outright falsified.
“They contained sentences we didn’t actually say,” Pohl said of interrogation transcripts they were sent home with.
“They twisted it to make it seem as if we admitted that we wanted to work illegally in the US,” she told the German outlet Ostee Zeitung.
And then this feels like the after-the-fact coverup. Whatever they held them on was super flimsy, so they tried to make it sound worse when they realized this was going to hit the news.
Per that last bit, I’m guessing they never had a lawyer present. Would make any of those fabricated statements null and void, if the constitution meant anything.
This is pretty standard treatment. There are only a limited number of holding cells in an airport, moslty for men.
If there is no returning flight that day they are sent to a local jail (known as a remand centre outside of the US) and stripping and searching is standard at those places.
The women said that they were going to do work in the US.
The women said “They twisted it to make it seem as if we admitted that we wanted to work illegally in the US.”
The news decided to pay attention, that’s what changed, not the reality.
I mean yeah for non-white people maybe. But teenage German girls, that’s a novum
I’m not American, so, it’s easy for me to call horseshit on that one.
I know every country has its problems and that there are desperate people everywhere.
but its very much american exceptionalism, that americans would assume people coming from a country that has infinitely more worker rights, would move to their failing state just to work.
If the US stop bombing and middling in South America, and countries in the middle east, most of these people will voluntary go back or never try to get into the states in the first place.
not the only ones spreading death and displacement,
Russia, Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to name a few of the worst offenders
Apart from work trips, I can’t think of the last time I had accommodation all booked. I don’t really see the point of travelling if you don’t make plans after being there a while and getting to know good info from locals. A lot of the time locations or weather just sucks, so I keep on and adventure somewhere else instead. That’s kind of normal outside of resort holidaying.
Not everyone has the money you have to be able to all of that.
Assumptions will rarely end up in your favour.
You perhaps didn’t read they were teen backpackers? Of all the travellers in the world, find me a majority in the financial position to book all their accommodation with the confidence that no matter what, it’s going to be great because that’s the assurance of such a travel style and the price tag it comes with.
It’s not like you’re going to find the best deals online in a place with a hundred places to stay. Or maybe you can and that’s the irony of your assumption.
I was talking about you. That’s why i used the word “you” in my comment replying to you.
Yes, I’m not sure why you think that wasn’t clear. Fills me with doubt that you grasped much else of my comment. Oh, well.
Are you daft? Lmao
Well I’m clearly not capable of your levels of communication and unfortunately haven’t been for some time.
I foolishly thought of people’s real world experiences to explain a reality, when all you wanted was validation of your claim by—I dunno—an ATM receipt, or something… As I said, I am struggling to communicate on this level. I am so daft, you see.
Have a W-shaped cookie. You got me!
You mean hostel and Greyhound bus money as opposed to just hostel money for one place?
Right here officer this post. This guy is sus.
I wonder what passport people like you hold? This sounds like passport privilege. Those with “good” passports get to travel where they want without a thought.
There are many countries where they scrutinise where you’re going to be staying and how you’re going to pay. You can’t apply for any visa without giving proof of accommodation bookings and showing bank statements.
I’ve been to America before Trump and there were plenty of questions at the border about where I was going and to see my confirmed hotel bookings, and I went with a “good” passport (UK) at the Canadian border.
NGL, traveling to America right now is just too risky. Don’t do it, for your own safety.
