The European Commission has started issuing burner phones and stripped-down laptops to staff visiting the U.S. over concerns that the treatment of visitors to the country has become a security risk, according to a new report from the Financial Times. And it’s just the latest news that America’s slide into fascism under Donald Trump is having severe consequences for the United States’ standing in the world, all while the president announced Monday that he has no plans to obey a U.S. Supreme Court order to bring back a man wrongly sent to a prison in El Salvador.
Officials who spoke with the Financial Times said that new guidance for EU staff traveling to the U.S. included recommendations they not carry personal phones, turn off their burner phones when entering the country, and have “special sleeves” (presumably Faraday cages), that can protect from electronic snooping. U.S. border agents often confiscate phones and claim the right to look through anyone’s personal devices before they can be allowed to enter the U.S.
There have been several reports of researchers denied access to the U.S., including a French scientist who was reportedly stopped last month for having text messages that were critical of Trump. Other travelers from countries like Australia and Canada have reported being detained in horrendous conditions.
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The U.S. is also trying to deport people in a white nationalist scheme to purge the country of any dissent. Several international students have been kidnapped by masked secret police in recent weeks, including people like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, pro-Palestine protesters who are currently sitting in ICE detention facilities. Ozturk’s only “crime” was writing an op-ed for her student newspaper opposing Israel’s war on Gaza and she was picked up off the street near her home outside Boston and flown to Louisiana. The Trump regime has said it locked up Ozturk and is preparing to deport her for “antisemitism,” and supporting Hamas, but the Washington Post reported Sunday that the State Department’s investigation found she did no such thing.
Trump appeared for a press availability in the White House with El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele on Monday, where he made it clear that he’s going to continue shipping people who’ve committed no crime out of the country to El Salvador’s torture prisons. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the U.S. government needs to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who Trump falsely accuses of being a member of the MS-13 gang, but the U.S. president made it clear he has no plans to bring Garcia back.
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Source: Visitors to U.S. Take Extreme Precautions as Trump Continues March of Fascism
Robin Edgar
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