AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
If you have a green card or a valid visa, entering the U.S. is usually a straightforward affair. Border officials might ask the purpose of your visit and how long you intend to stay before waving you through. But lately, officers have stepped up their questioning of travelers. Visitors with apparently minor visa violations have been shackled and chained and sent to U.S. detention centers. Michelle Hackman, who covers immigration for The Wall Street Journal, has been following these cases. She joins me now in the studio. Welcome.
MICHELLE HACKMAN: Thanks for having me.
RASCOE: So in your latest article, you mentioned border officials are using aggressive questioning tactics with visa holders and tourists. What are you seeing?
HACKMAN: Yeah. So we're seeing a lot of cases, and it's tough, Ayesha, because the government, in many cases, is unwilling or unable to give us all the facts in the case, but what we're seeing is people with relatively minor visa issues. So, let's say they're on a tourist visa and they're house-sitting for someone. Another example - someone who is a fiancé of a U.S. citizen coming in on a tourist visa and border officials saying, wait a second, that's illegal. You should be on a fiancé visa. You know, in the past, border officials would say, OK, there's a problem with your visa. You need to fix it and come back to us. Now, people are being sent to detention centers. They're being deported over these really minor violations, and it's scary for people.
RASCOE: Obviously, I'm not a lawyer and not privy to everything that ICE knows, but why not just deport someone who has problems with their visas immediately or just turn them around at the airport? Why shackle and chain them and keep them in ICE detention?
HACKMAN: I think some of the issues around shackling and really aggressive questioning that we've seen is, in some sense, just rogue officers that have fewer checks higher up in the chain. The reasons that people are being detained for much longer - not entirely clear to me. But often, if you are going to be deported, it's something as simple as you need to buy a plane ticket, and the government doesn't just let you buy any plane ticket. You have to buy an open plane ticket, which means they can put you on any flight, and those can run, you know, six, seven, $8,000. People don't often have that money, and so they're being detained longer so they can collect the money just to buy their plane ticket home.
RASCOE: You've reached out to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. What are they telling you?
HACKMAN: Yeah, so they are pointing to President Trump's executive order that orders extreme vetting, and they're proud of this. They're saying, you know, we're enforcing the laws on the books, and we're catching attempted terrorists coming into the country. We're catching people who are breaking our laws. You know, this is something that they are proud of.
RASCOE: One concern that people have had is border officials going through people's phones and looking for, you know, social media, stuff like that. Is that legal? Is it legal for border officials to go through people's phones?
HACKMAN: In our laws and in our precedent, we, even as U.S. citizens, have very few rights at the border. You and I, coming back into the country, could have our phones searched, and that's even more the case for people who are not U.S. citizens. It's totally legal for agents to search people's phones, to search people's social media accounts. They're using AI tools to find things on people. So it's a much deeper level of searching than people are aware of. And I think people are being even more scrutinized than they were just a few years ago because of these really recent advances in AI technology.
RASCOE: Can people be deported just based on their beliefs or, say, if they just don't like the current administration? Is that enough to get deported just based on that?
HACKMAN: That's a really live question, and I think that's the one that we're going to be answering in the courts over the next few years. Obviously, there was a really famous case that's ongoing with this Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil, who participated in pro-Palestine protests and the government is alleging maybe did more than that, spread Hamas propaganda. And the government's rationale is that it is a foreign policy priority for them to remove him from the country, and on the face of the law, that's legal. You know, whether that law is legal, I think, is going to be the big question that we have to answer. There have been several other cases since where they're trying to apply that same law to other people.
RASCOE: Travelers from Asia, Africa and South America have a much more difficult time entering the U.S. compared to Europeans. In India, the current wait time, just for an appointment for a tourist visa is more than a year. Most Europeans don't even need a visa to come to the U.S. for short stays. Is the focus on these European tourists being blown out of proportion, or...
HACKMAN: I think you hear about it, again, because these are wealthier people who have more savvy about going to the media. You're right that people from - generally from poorer countries have a much harder time even getting tourist visas. The denial rate is really high. And so I think a lot of cases, people don't have access to the U.S. at all are being stopped sort of at that level, and so we don't even hear about it.
RASCOE: People abroad may think twice before coming to the U.S. if they're hearing these sorts of news stories. What kind of impact could this crackdown have on the U.S. economy?
HACKMAN: It could end up being significant. You know, right now, the industry that I've seen that has been the most alarmed, I would say, are universities, research institutions. The type of places that rely a lot on international exchange. They have foreign professors, foreign students, but it could have a much broader impact. You know, tourism is one of our main industries here in the U.S., but if people feel like they could face danger or long detention, it could deter some people from coming here.
RASCOE: That's Michelle Hackman. She covers immigration for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for coming in today.
HACKMAN: Thank you.
RASCOE: We contacted the U.S. Customs Border and Protection Agency to ask them about charges of aggressive vetting tactics. A CBP assistant commissioner told NPR in an email that the agency has always performed screenings and inspections. Lawful travelers have nothing to fear from these measures, he said, adding a visa is a privilege, not a right.
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