David Lindorff has done many trips abroad to Asia and Europe and describes his experience on returning to the US after having been in Europe since October 1, 2024. He says that these returns are always unpleasant, with a long flight followed by long lines at US immigration with other grumpy fliers anxious to get to a comfortable bed.

But this time it was different. The arrival hall at Newark was nearly empty and there were no lines at any of the three sections for US passport holders, permanent resident green card holders, or other foreign passport holders. Of course, while highly unusual, this may have been partly due to a statistical fluke. Sometimes several planes arrive close together creating massive crowds, at other times just a single plane may arrive, though that is unlikely at a major airport like Newark. But he says that the statistics show that the number of people coming to the US is dropping due to worldwide coverage of the alarming way that people are being treated by ICE at US entry ports.

Reports from tourism trade organizations show US tourism figures, which typically rise year after year and generate tens of billions of dollars in business income and taxes, dropped this year in March by 11.1 percent. A major explanation is that foreign governments are issuing travel warnings to their citizens and to visitors planning a return to the us about the draconian risks of travel in the US. These range from aggressive militarized police to coercive and brutal immigration officers, to the ubiquity of guns and gun violence in American society. Horrific stories of lengthy detentions, hurried deportations with no hearing, and a lack of access to a phone or computer to contact relatives or an attorney while confined. And many of the victims if such abuse are foreign tourists from supposedly friendly nations like Canada, Britain, Germany and France that are (or at least were), US allies. Not surprisingly, foreigners from nations that have long been major sources of US-bound tourists, including China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Germany and Spain are now opting for other destinations than Trump’s xenophobic America.

Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, meanwhile, has added a warning about travel to the USA, advising that even having a valid authorization permit or U.S. visa doesn’t guarantee the right to enter the country and, if refused, “there is no legal recourse against this decision.” The warning goes on to say ,“Criminal records in the United States, false information about the purpose of their stay, or even a slight overstay of their visa upon entry or exit can lead to arrest, detention, and deportation.”

Meanwhile, Germany, Denmark, and Finland, which all allow their citizens who are transgender or binary to list their gender as X on their passports, are being warned that the US may deny entry to transgender or non-binary travelers. They are also advising travelers to the US to wipe personal data from all devices being brought into the US, to avoid logging into personal email or social media accounts while in the US, and to use encrypted cloud storage instead of local files, and to minimize device use at customs.

In another rather shocking development, responding to increasing incidents of ICE and Border Patrol officers searching the contents of and even confiscating computers and phones of people entering the US, a growing number of countries, including Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, and Ireland, are advising their citizens to leave their phones at home and to switch to using so-called “burner phones” picked up in the US (which unlike in most other countries, can be purchased with cash and qwith no need to register with a passport or ID card, making them untraceable. This, they are saying, is necessary because border agents are checking the mail and social media records of visitor and immigrant phones looking for content— critical comments about the US or President Trump, evidence of support for abortion, LGBTQ rights, criticism of US foreign policy, etc. —which could lead to refusal to admit someone to the US, or could even lead to detention and deportation in some cases. Among the recommendations being made to travelers from those countries to the US:

The European Union has even begun issuing burner phones — so called because they can be destroyed when the traveler is done with them — to staff-members and diplomatic officials traveling to the US. It’s an astonishing development given that burner phones had in the past been a favorite of criminals seeking to hide their activities, connections, and call history.

That is not all. Even more alarming is that due to all the tariff chaos, the number of container ships arriving at the major US ports has seen a big drop, and this has had a knock on effect with the trucking business also hit due to lower levels of imports.

For the week ending May 3, the number of freight vessels leaving China and headed to the Southern California ports, the main U.S. ports receiving Chinese freight and other Asian trade, is down 29% week-over-week, according to Port Optimizer, a tracking system for ships. Year-over-year, the data shows a 44% drop in vessels scheduled to arrive the week of May 4-May 10.
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The fallout from the ocean freight slowdown is beginning to hit ground transport linked to ports.
“We are at a tipping point on the West Coast,” said Ken Adamo, chief of analytics at DAT Freight & Analytics. “Looking at how many truck loads are available versus trucks, we’ve seen a precipitous drop, over 700,000 loads have evaporated nationally in the past week compared to two weeks prior,” he said.
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The vessel drop coincides with a rise in canceled sailings from ocean carriers on Pacific routes that include ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Seattle, according to an alert from Worldwide Logistics informing clients of blank sailings.

Further knock-on effects of Trump’s haphazard policies will be lack of products on shelves, higher prices, and many fewer people in hotels and restaurants and other tourist spots.