Remember the year: 2025 was when it all changed.
When socials transformed from self-expression to entrapment.
I have to disagree with the 2025 part of this. While this admin has made the 100mi Constitution Free Zone even more hostile, practices like leveraging SM accounts against us have been ramping up for most of a decade.
I think a non-citizen should take a burner phone or clean phone and set all their social media to private before going. The risk is considerable and being placed into a holding cell for weeks or months, even when having a ticket home (as has happened to some) is a truamatic outcome.
A citizen has a question to ask, on if they want to risk being one of the unfortunate examples to create a media wave of pushback, and if so; be prepared for a tricky interview. Obviously those with children and things to do might not want to take that risk.
With all of this in mind: One might note the powerful hypocrisy of JD Vance's unexpected lecture to the governments of European allies demanding protections of free speech[0], while America's current border policy is the polar opposite of that. There's nothing wrong with being strict on people who you think are entirely intending to violate their visa but everything wrong in trying to thought-police some pretty soft ideas[1]. The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin.
For me, this administration has been a huge mask slip for pretty much all the "personal freedoms" talking points of GOP politicians/voters. Its appears it was never about "free speech" but rather the dominion of their speech.
I am also deleted from socials from many years (besides anon HN), so I hear the perspective, but isn’t a bit dramatic to relate it to border reentry for an American citizen?
Oh good, more semantics to the rescue. You're as great as those people who ended homelessness with 'unhoused', ended racism by lumping all non-whites into 'people of color'.
I'd say 'God bless you sir', but that's hate speech as well now.
> I'd say 'God bless you sir', but that's hate speech as well now.
The only people I see suggesting that it's hate speech are conservatives who pretend you can't say anything anymore. I'd love to see something beyond some random Twitter post from some random user that classifies "god bless you" is literal hate speech.
It’s easier to prop up a strawman then have a real discussion
This “can’t say god bless you” nonsense is just moving the “war on Christmas” culture war BS even further.
It is not a serious discussion. The end goal is to install the 10 commandments in public and force prayer in schools. Because anything else is persecution
Words matter because they define our shared reality.
The examples you shared are liberal identity politics, nonsense I don't prescribe to. Calling a person "illegal" is a way of dehumanization. Dehumanization is the first step towards genocide.
I think that you're probably going to end up in a pit about the term "hate speech", but the terms "illegal" or "illegal alien", which seems to be the words of the moment, are deliberately dehumanizing, and that's the point.
You (and everyone who takes that stance) are reading a lot into how the term should be parsed. "Immigrated illegally" is a completely accurate statement. It is not saying that the people are illegal (how could they be?), but that their immigration was illegal.
Now, you can say that the immigration laws are morally wrong if you want, but that's a different argument. As far as descriptive terms go, they immigrated illegally, so they're illegal immigrants - immigrants whose immigration was illegal. No, we're not going to go with whatever newspeak alternative you come up with.
But your side also has a valid point: These are human beings. They deserve to be treated like humans, not animals, even if they are being expelled from the country. That's a true point, and one that needs to be made repeatedly. But heckling people about the term used to describe the people is not going to move the needle on that issue.
> heckling people about the term used to describe the people is not going to move the needle on that issue
I disagree with this; this is the primary means by which dehumanization occurs. I like to think of "police officer" as the perfect dehumanizing term because it showcases that dehumanization is not always negative. Some people will hear the term and automatically think good things and some will automatically think bad things. Few will think about a person they don't know, complete with vices and virtues they may or may not agree with. The point is that dehumanization makes you think of a concept of a person rather than a person.
But that's true of every term. "Computer programmer", say. People hear that term and automatically think certain things. " Few will think about a person they don't know, complete with vices and virtues they may or may not agree with." It "makes you think of a concept of a person rather than a person."
So I think that dynamic is present in every term we use to refer to humans as something other than "human". I don't need people to refer to me as "human who programs computers" so that I'm not dehumanized. (In fact, once "human that programs computers" becomes the accepted term, that term would also have the dynamic of dehumanizing those it covers. Having the word "human" in it wouldn't save it once it became a recognized term.)
Your whole first paragraph is actually offering another example of a dehumanizing term. The point of “human who does a thing” is to be a naturally-chosen phrase, not a term. Think, “Joe programs computers”, not, “Joe is a computer programmer”. You are correct that it would similarly be dehumanizing if it simply became another term to replace “computer programmer” like “Joe is a human-who-programs-computers” but that is because the statement is about what Joe supposedly “is” rather than being a description of things they’ve done.
> You (and everyone who takes that stance) are reading a lot into how the term should be parsed. "Immigrated illegally" is a completely accurate statement. It is not saying that the people are illegal (how could they be?), but that their immigration was illegal.
That is not what is said - otherwise it would be people who immigrated illegally, using an adverb instead of an adjective.
By moving the designator illegal from the activity to the person, you are criminalizing their being instead of their deed.
Well, if someone doesn't have a license and drives, we call them an "unlicensed driver". It's their driving that's unlicensed, not them as a human being.
Agreed. The right terminology used by even the government is "unauthorized immigrants". These include people who may actually be in the country legally - like those seeking asylum - but can be deported at any time.
That said, though no person's existence should be called "illegal", I'm afraid it's an uphill battle to change that term if Fox News is going to use it 24/7. There are better hills to die on.
> The right terminology used by even the government is "unauthorized immigrants".
I wish they used the term immigrant. The preferred term seems to be "illegal alien" or one or both of those words. See this example from yesterday from the department of homeland security:
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/07/20/six-months-keeping-ameri...
The article says "people", not humans. And whichever term it is using, it is not referring to undocumented immigrants, it is referring to people, regardless of documentation. "Trump's 'border czar', Tom Homan, has stated ICE does not need probable cause to detain people based on their physical appearance. Homan confirmed ICE has made what he described as 'collateral arrests' of 'many' American citizens". The goal is to arrest at least 3,000 brown people, many of which will end up being US citizens, but that is just collateral damage to them.
> Piker, a U.S. citizen who streams on Twitch under the name HasanAbi, said in a live stream that he was taken aside after landing at Chicago O’Hare International Airport from Paris on Sunday — despite being enrolled in Global Entry, a CBP program that is supposed to give expedited clearance to “pre-approved, low-risk travelers” returning to the U.S.
> Piker said he was brought to a detention room inside O’Hare that had “fluorescent lightbulbs, the whole nine [yards]” and where a CBP agent questioned him for about two hours about his job, his political affiliation, his opinion of Trump and whether he had any connections to terrorist groups.
why would it be fabricated? Given some of the opinions he espouses on Twitch and the hardline posture of ICE today it makes sense they'd interview him based on his opinions on Hamas.
There was a deconstruction of his tweets timeline somewhere. He said he was questioned for two hours but the timeline shows the time his plane arrived and then an hour later his tweet that he was out. It leaves more like 20-30 minutes for questioning. There is speculation he actually was pulled aside for a routine Global Entry application on arrival interview since he had said he had applied for it in some prior episode.
This YouTube video is making deconstruction and timeline does not corroborate what Hasan is saying and it also looks like it was standard Global Entry interview
This is incorrect. There have been many documented incidents of US Citizens being detained and harassed upon US entry for what they say online. You can disagree about politics all you want, but the facts remain that USCBP has begun persecuting people for all sorts of things, both political and otherwise.
They have not "begun" persecuting people for all sorts of things. Individual CBP agents have always had extreme authority relative to their position and have always had cases of denying people for extremely stupid reasons every year.
The idea that US citizens need to scrub their phones before entering the US is just a hysterical media narrative related to the drama around a certain middle east conflict right now (which I shall not mention because it will further devolve into a flame war).
I can tell you with certainty the amount of border agents who have a strong opinion about this certain middle eastern conflict is exceedingly small.
> The idea that US citizens need to scrub their phones before entering the US is just a hysterical media narrative related to the drama around a certain middle east conflict right now
This seems to imply that public discussions about cleaning phones wasn't a meaningfully common occurrence before now.
But it's been a spontaneous topic for as long as devices have been at risk from border agencies - since at least 2017.
Does reporting on stories more often when the number of actual incidents stay the same really mean that anything is actually different besides political rhetoric?
> has begun
ICE has been arresting, detaining and exiling US citizens for at least 10 years:
I think its a pretty big deal when a UK citizen who is entirely willing and capable of buying a ticket to return home is needlessly detained[0] by ICE. Same goes for the Irish guy who was injured so missed his flight home and was over his visa by three days[1]. They detained him for 3 months and barred re-entry for 10 years.
My life is given meaning by my relationships with my partner and family, pursuing my passions and hobbies, semi yearly bicycle trips, petting my cat etc. Its meaning is chipped away at when I hear about random grandparents black bagged at the home depot; the idea that immense and pointless suffering is being meted out an underclass supposedly for my benefit, without any significant way to protest or stop it without focusing those dark forces upon myself.
"They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."
They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1933-45 - Milton Mayer
I was way ahead of all the people deleting their social media by not posting anything to social media since ~2015 or so. I'm still shocked that people put up with the abuses of Meta, Twitter, and all the rest.
If you ever made a social media account under your own name, the game's over. I'll assume the alphabet agencies will be able to see even “deleted” accounts.
Facebook has made it impossible for a generation of people to become spies and undercover cops, because their parents have uploaded an entire childhoods worth of photos and identifying information onto there. They have been doxxed before they even knew they wanted to be spies. Every nation state has spies in all the big tech companies.
What I wonder is, are people just listing their social media accounts when asked? I would imagine that if I was an activist on social media or if I was expressing strong views not liked by somebody I would definitely not tell that somebody if they are in a position to make my life harder. Is this maybe like the "Are you planning to do a terrorist attack" question in the visa application form or maybe like the one that asks you if you committed a genocide or war crimes?
My bet is actually that it is intended to silence anyone who is NOT hostile to USA but has grievances with the current administration, i.e. someone who is smart and actually admires USA and aspires to visit/study/work in USA but wants USA to be better. I.e someone smart who has a chance to get into a prestigious US University and aspire to actually make the world a better place by someday make a huge contribution to science and wishes that USA was ethical country so their life work was put in a good use and not just some financial/political gain.
I'm pretty certain that USA will have a change in profile of the people they attract and that's probably the intention but I don't think that it will be good for America and the humanity. The message is clear, if you aspire to make the world a more fair place or a place that the humanity as a whole gets elevated then don't come, this place is about maximizing the power of the politicians and the profits of the shareholders.
Is there someone aggregating information about these incidents? Would be nice to know if i should avoid visiting next year.
But also i can't help but feel sorry and mad about all the people who used their real names online for political activism. How have you not learned these lessons from history? Did you think you re special?
ICE now uses Mobile Fortify that does instant facial recognition and fingerprint scanning against hundreds of millions of images that looks up DHS, State Department, and state law enforcement databases. It can then do a "Super Query" that can hit multiple databases on individuals, vehicles, airplanes, vessels, addresses, phone numbers and firearms. LexisNexis will be added in the near future.
They also use Clearview AI which does facial recognition against social media and the web.
Deleting your social media accounts right before travel could be regarded as suspicious and not effective as your account data may not really be deleted.
Isn't someone doing something like this the exact opposite of what incogni would want considering their whole business is to 'help people remove their data' from data brokers?
I did something similar. I knew anything on my accounts was already in the palantir dataset used by DHS. I wanted to at least remove presence local on my phone, I didn't bring a computer abroad with me.
I went through my history and deleted twitter, x and bluesky (I didn't and still don't read them via their apps). Probably should have deleted any mastadon links that I viewed in case any were not loyal enough.
I deleted stored passwords for all social media. Deleting SMS was tedious, if you donate, they sell you number to every campaign that is considered the "enemy of the people" by the establishment. The best I could do was search for "campaign" and "Trump" and delete the SMS messages out of the Messages app.
Of course my luck was better than I expected. All I did at immigration was point out one of my kids was really tired (he was quite sick on the plane-ride home). The CBP agent said something about "I'll get you out of here soon" and that was true without a single question.
I suppose my toddler makes me look like less of a risk to national security than when I would return from solo overseas travel. I'm not going to get too comfortable though.
I mean... just get a burner phone and transfer the number over for your travel duration and call it a day seems easier than all this.
Cheapo iPhone Mini on one of the refurb sites'll run you a couple hundred bucks. Not too too bad if you just need something to connect to Wi-Fi and access maps and email with.
> suing the everlasting shit out of the government when they try to detain you, which they won't, because this is just made up.
Two things
1) Suing the US government only works when they say you can sue them (see: Sovereign Immunity). Additionally, the rank-and-file have vastly extended defenses against lawsuits (see: Qualified Immunity). If an customs agent decided to get especially frisky against you, the odds of you succeeding on a lawsuit against either the agent or the US government is close to nil unless it was an extreme violation of your constitutional rights, and even then it's not in your favor.
2) We have multiple recent examples of US citizens being illegally detained by ICE agents despite showing paperwork and evidence of citizenship. If you think you're safe: You're not.
There are lots of legal carveouts for when you can't sue the government but that is not relevant to this particular discussion. Yes, there are a handful of recent examples of ICE detentions of American citizens suspected of being illegal aliens (although the only deportations I'm aware of are minor natural born citizens deported by request of their birth mother). The majority for obstruction but a handful pending deportation proceedings and held even after documentation of citizenship was produced. You've heard about them for two reasons.
1) There are very few compared to the scale of deportations currently being processed, so each case is exceptional against an incredibly low base rate. And these stories have been happening since 9/11 but journalists didn't give a shit until there was a salient political point to be scored
2) They are all suing the everlasting shit out of the government or have already settled
To be fair you raised a different point about ICE detentions as opposed to US citizens being denied reentry because of social media posts. The former happens but extremely rarely (like winning the lottery rare). The latter does not happen.
Since the election, we have social and institutional norms be torn down or routed around time and time again. While I agree that I have not seen this specific situation yet, I think you'd be a fool to blithely assume it will not happen soon. It is possible, it is (by some people in power) highly desirable, and those people have made it clear that legality is irrelevant to them.
These are not normal times, and your cynicism is not serving you well here.
EDIT: I don't believe that the parent post should have been flagged. While I disagree with them, I believe they posted productively and in good faith.
I was probably flagged for the unnecessary snark at the beginning of my post. I get it -- this isn't reddit and that sort of thing doesn't help. But I do earnestly believe that this is an almost pathological exaggeration of the state of the world.
I sympathize with some of the authors views, but deleting your accounts and going to press to brag about it seems kinda incongruent. It's like a chain smoker going to the liqueur store and bragging that he quit smoking.
No one who has 300,000 tweets has a healthy relation with social media. Not even Musk has that many!
He'll be back on ~~crack~~ social media in a month, tops.
I deleted all of my social media accounts prior to the last presidential election. I didn't wany myself or my family becoming targets of the administration or their sycophants.
From the article:
I have to disagree with the 2025 part of this. While this admin has made the 100mi Constitution Free Zone even more hostile, practices like leveraging SM accounts against us have been ramping up for most of a decade.refs: https://www.techdirt.com/2017/02/09/dhs-secretary-says-agenc...
https://www.techdirt.com/2018/01/02/dhs-documents-show-haras...
https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/17/report-cbps-border-devic...
While it's possibly a valid point, those articles are all from the last iteration of this specific administration.
It is my experience that every administration massively ramps-up Bush era bulk surveillance.
Then I would expect a number of articles from 2020-2024 as well.
I think a non-citizen should take a burner phone or clean phone and set all their social media to private before going. The risk is considerable and being placed into a holding cell for weeks or months, even when having a ticket home (as has happened to some) is a truamatic outcome.
A citizen has a question to ask, on if they want to risk being one of the unfortunate examples to create a media wave of pushback, and if so; be prepared for a tricky interview. Obviously those with children and things to do might not want to take that risk.
With all of this in mind: One might note the powerful hypocrisy of JD Vance's unexpected lecture to the governments of European allies demanding protections of free speech[0], while America's current border policy is the polar opposite of that. There's nothing wrong with being strict on people who you think are entirely intending to violate their visa but everything wrong in trying to thought-police some pretty soft ideas[1]. The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin.
For me, this administration has been a huge mask slip for pretty much all the "personal freedoms" talking points of GOP politicians/voters. Its appears it was never about "free speech" but rather the dominion of their speech.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceve3wl21x1o
[1] https://time.com/7297472/jd-vance-meme-mads-mikkelsen-touris...
>set all their social media to private before going.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/19/g-s1-73572/us-resumes-visas-f... : All students applying for a visa will need to set their social media profiles to "public," according to a post Wednesday on the State Department's website
> The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin.
My understanding is that he was stopped for other reasons, and that meme was questioned while he was being already detained.
However, there's NO doubt this is not the America I grew up in.
They scrape all social media on a pro-active basis, so setting it to private before a trip won't help.
I set up accounts with my full legal name on them a while ago. There is minimal activity on them. If anyone wants to find me, msg me there.
I do all my actual online activities with handles as God intended back in the good old days.
Social media’s goal of connecting everyone with real names never was for our benefit and we all should stop giving them this data.
Create an alternate, pro-trump public social.
Take it a step further, get a Trump phone on Trump mobile, loaded with pro-Trump public socials
this is probably a billion business idea
sell these by the airport duty-free for 20, or heck 50 a pop
we could probably get the man himself to let us use his brand for a cut.
And don't forget to set the wallpaper to one of Trump's NFTs
I am also deleted from socials from many years (besides anon HN), so I hear the perspective, but isn’t a bit dramatic to relate it to border reentry for an American citizen?
Or is there some absurd news story I missed?
> is there some absurd news story I missed?
You've missed several, here's a good summary (while it's still online): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_A...
> Stephen Miller [...] ordered American security forces to arrest at least 3,000 humans per day nationwide.
What a bizarre article! It always refers to illegal immigrants as "humans" as if that's the crime.
Is this a new trend in the euphemism treadmill? Have we moved from "undocumented immigrant" to "human"?
In the minutes after you comment, it has been ninja edited to change "humans" to "people".
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Detention_and_dep...
The oddness of the original...was it was possibly pasted from an LLM response?
It says "people" for me?
"Illegal immigrants" are humans.
The term illegal immigrant is hate speech, trying to criminalize their being. Humans that broke immigration law is more appropriate.
Oh good, more semantics to the rescue. You're as great as those people who ended homelessness with 'unhoused', ended racism by lumping all non-whites into 'people of color'.
I'd say 'God bless you sir', but that's hate speech as well now.
> I'd say 'God bless you sir', but that's hate speech as well now.
The only people I see suggesting that it's hate speech are conservatives who pretend you can't say anything anymore. I'd love to see something beyond some random Twitter post from some random user that classifies "god bless you" is literal hate speech.
Regardless, may Satan see you in the end.
It’s easier to prop up a strawman then have a real discussion
This “can’t say god bless you” nonsense is just moving the “war on Christmas” culture war BS even further.
It is not a serious discussion. The end goal is to install the 10 commandments in public and force prayer in schools. Because anything else is persecution
Words matter because they define our shared reality.
The examples you shared are liberal identity politics, nonsense I don't prescribe to. Calling a person "illegal" is a way of dehumanization. Dehumanization is the first step towards genocide.
I think that you're probably going to end up in a pit about the term "hate speech", but the terms "illegal" or "illegal alien", which seems to be the words of the moment, are deliberately dehumanizing, and that's the point.
You (and everyone who takes that stance) are reading a lot into how the term should be parsed. "Immigrated illegally" is a completely accurate statement. It is not saying that the people are illegal (how could they be?), but that their immigration was illegal.
Now, you can say that the immigration laws are morally wrong if you want, but that's a different argument. As far as descriptive terms go, they immigrated illegally, so they're illegal immigrants - immigrants whose immigration was illegal. No, we're not going to go with whatever newspeak alternative you come up with.
But your side also has a valid point: These are human beings. They deserve to be treated like humans, not animals, even if they are being expelled from the country. That's a true point, and one that needs to be made repeatedly. But heckling people about the term used to describe the people is not going to move the needle on that issue.
> heckling people about the term used to describe the people is not going to move the needle on that issue
I disagree with this; this is the primary means by which dehumanization occurs. I like to think of "police officer" as the perfect dehumanizing term because it showcases that dehumanization is not always negative. Some people will hear the term and automatically think good things and some will automatically think bad things. Few will think about a person they don't know, complete with vices and virtues they may or may not agree with. The point is that dehumanization makes you think of a concept of a person rather than a person.
But that's true of every term. "Computer programmer", say. People hear that term and automatically think certain things. " Few will think about a person they don't know, complete with vices and virtues they may or may not agree with." It "makes you think of a concept of a person rather than a person."
So I think that dynamic is present in every term we use to refer to humans as something other than "human". I don't need people to refer to me as "human who programs computers" so that I'm not dehumanized. (In fact, once "human that programs computers" becomes the accepted term, that term would also have the dynamic of dehumanizing those it covers. Having the word "human" in it wouldn't save it once it became a recognized term.)
Your whole first paragraph is actually offering another example of a dehumanizing term. The point of “human who does a thing” is to be a naturally-chosen phrase, not a term. Think, “Joe programs computers”, not, “Joe is a computer programmer”. You are correct that it would similarly be dehumanizing if it simply became another term to replace “computer programmer” like “Joe is a human-who-programs-computers” but that is because the statement is about what Joe supposedly “is” rather than being a description of things they’ve done.
> You (and everyone who takes that stance) are reading a lot into how the term should be parsed. "Immigrated illegally" is a completely accurate statement. It is not saying that the people are illegal (how could they be?), but that their immigration was illegal.
That is not what is said - otherwise it would be people who immigrated illegally, using an adverb instead of an adjective.
By moving the designator illegal from the activity to the person, you are criminalizing their being instead of their deed.
Maybe we should start calling people who speed "Illegal Drivers," so that people can see the danger of a term like "Illegal Immigrant."
Well, if someone doesn't have a license and drives, we call them an "unlicensed driver". It's their driving that's unlicensed, not them as a human being.
Agreed. The right terminology used by even the government is "unauthorized immigrants". These include people who may actually be in the country legally - like those seeking asylum - but can be deported at any time.
That said, though no person's existence should be called "illegal", I'm afraid it's an uphill battle to change that term if Fox News is going to use it 24/7. There are better hills to die on.
> The right terminology used by even the government is "unauthorized immigrants".
I wish they used the term immigrant. The preferred term seems to be "illegal alien" or one or both of those words. See this example from yesterday from the department of homeland security: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/07/20/six-months-keeping-ameri...
Or a release from May for the Whitehouse: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-pr...
Or ICE in April: https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/100-days-record-breaking-i...
The article says "people", not humans. And whichever term it is using, it is not referring to undocumented immigrants, it is referring to people, regardless of documentation. "Trump's 'border czar', Tom Homan, has stated ICE does not need probable cause to detain people based on their physical appearance. Homan confirmed ICE has made what he described as 'collateral arrests' of 'many' American citizens". The goal is to arrest at least 3,000 brown people, many of which will end up being US citizens, but that is just collateral damage to them.
It says "people" now. Half an hour ago it said "human". See edit:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2600:4...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Detention_and_d...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/05/12/hasan-...
> Piker, a U.S. citizen who streams on Twitch under the name HasanAbi, said in a live stream that he was taken aside after landing at Chicago O’Hare International Airport from Paris on Sunday — despite being enrolled in Global Entry, a CBP program that is supposed to give expedited clearance to “pre-approved, low-risk travelers” returning to the U.S.
> Piker said he was brought to a detention room inside O’Hare that had “fluorescent lightbulbs, the whole nine [yards]” and where a CBP agent questioned him for about two hours about his job, his political affiliation, his opinion of Trump and whether he had any connections to terrorist groups.
Hasan's story is totally fabricated, so that's a bad example.
why would it be fabricated? Given some of the opinions he espouses on Twitch and the hardline posture of ICE today it makes sense they'd interview him based on his opinions on Hamas.
There was a deconstruction of his tweets timeline somewhere. He said he was questioned for two hours but the timeline shows the time his plane arrived and then an hour later his tweet that he was out. It leaves more like 20-30 minutes for questioning. There is speculation he actually was pulled aside for a routine Global Entry application on arrival interview since he had said he had applied for it in some prior episode.
> why would it be fabricated?
for views and attention, he thrives on it
That seems like a big claim, do you have any evidence to back it up?
This YouTube video is making deconstruction and timeline does not corroborate what Hasan is saying and it also looks like it was standard Global Entry interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYvgns0MAdo
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This is incorrect. There have been many documented incidents of US Citizens being detained and harassed upon US entry for what they say online. You can disagree about politics all you want, but the facts remain that USCBP has begun persecuting people for all sorts of things, both political and otherwise.
They have not "begun" persecuting people for all sorts of things. Individual CBP agents have always had extreme authority relative to their position and have always had cases of denying people for extremely stupid reasons every year.
The idea that US citizens need to scrub their phones before entering the US is just a hysterical media narrative related to the drama around a certain middle east conflict right now (which I shall not mention because it will further devolve into a flame war).
I can tell you with certainty the amount of border agents who have a strong opinion about this certain middle eastern conflict is exceedingly small.
> The idea that US citizens need to scrub their phones before entering the US is just a hysterical media narrative related to the drama around a certain middle east conflict right now
This seems to imply that public discussions about cleaning phones wasn't a meaningfully common occurrence before now.
But it's been a spontaneous topic for as long as devices have been at risk from border agencies - since at least 2017.
Does reporting on stories more often when the number of actual incidents stay the same really mean that anything is actually different besides political rhetoric?
> has begun
ICE has been arresting, detaining and exiling US citizens for at least 10 years:
https://migrantinsider.com/p/ice-has-deported-at-least-70-us...
I think its a pretty big deal when a UK citizen who is entirely willing and capable of buying a ticket to return home is needlessly detained[0] by ICE. Same goes for the Irish guy who was injured so missed his flight home and was over his visa by three days[1]. They detained him for 3 months and barred re-entry for 10 years.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly67j35y99o
[1] https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41670047.html
My life is given meaning by my relationships with my partner and family, pursuing my passions and hobbies, semi yearly bicycle trips, petting my cat etc. Its meaning is chipped away at when I hear about random grandparents black bagged at the home depot; the idea that immense and pointless suffering is being meted out an underclass supposedly for my benefit, without any significant way to protest or stop it without focusing those dark forces upon myself.
> If you look at the Year-over-year border stats there's barely any change in denials at airports specifically.
Where are you finding data for 2025?
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https://www.newsweek.com/how-many-people-are-being-blocked-e...
OK, so an old article with poor data. Thanks!
"They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."
They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1933-45 - Milton Mayer
I was way ahead of all the people deleting their social media by not posting anything to social media since ~2015 or so. I'm still shocked that people put up with the abuses of Meta, Twitter, and all the rest.
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Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Why are such articles flagged? And why do only flaggers get a flag vote but there's no unflag vote?
> In 2025, social media has moved from self-expression to self-entrapment
I sort of feel if you're only figuring this out now you've been willfully/woefully ignorant.
If you ever made a social media account under your own name, the game's over. I'll assume the alphabet agencies will be able to see even “deleted” accounts.
My pity and my respect are mutually exclusive. This author seemingly wants both and gets neither. People like this are worse than the bullies.
Either be brave enough to stand up for what you believe in or shut up and do your capitulation in silence.
When FB first came out someone work in finance said
"this is personal file, but the intellgency agencies has just made it fashionable and making money for us to maintain our own personal files"
This is even worse then the Stasi. At least at that time people didn't see it as something operasive, but now we see it as fashionable.
It is more important to NOT have your personal data on the some else's hardware.
Facebook has made it impossible for a generation of people to become spies and undercover cops, because their parents have uploaded an entire childhoods worth of photos and identifying information onto there. They have been doxxed before they even knew they wanted to be spies. Every nation state has spies in all the big tech companies.
What's the process for checking? They ask you to unlock your phone or hook it up to some machine and slurps info out?
What I wonder is, are people just listing their social media accounts when asked? I would imagine that if I was an activist on social media or if I was expressing strong views not liked by somebody I would definitely not tell that somebody if they are in a position to make my life harder. Is this maybe like the "Are you planning to do a terrorist attack" question in the visa application form or maybe like the one that asks you if you committed a genocide or war crimes?
My bet is actually that it is intended to silence anyone who is NOT hostile to USA but has grievances with the current administration, i.e. someone who is smart and actually admires USA and aspires to visit/study/work in USA but wants USA to be better. I.e someone smart who has a chance to get into a prestigious US University and aspire to actually make the world a better place by someday make a huge contribution to science and wishes that USA was ethical country so their life work was put in a good use and not just some financial/political gain.
I'm pretty certain that USA will have a change in profile of the people they attract and that's probably the intention but I don't think that it will be good for America and the humanity. The message is clear, if you aspire to make the world a more fair place or a place that the humanity as a whole gets elevated then don't come, this place is about maximizing the power of the politicians and the profits of the shareholders.
> What I wonder is, are people just listing their social media accounts when asked?
The State Department is fully capable of finding social media accounts that you haven't listed: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/red...
And given that they're working hard on gathering data on citizens too, this will soon apply to you too?
I imagine that if I was a political activist or something I would have op-sec.
That's why, IMHO, this is just an attempt of inducing self censorship among those who aspire to come to US for something productive.
Is there someone aggregating information about these incidents? Would be nice to know if i should avoid visiting next year.
But also i can't help but feel sorry and mad about all the people who used their real names online for political activism. How have you not learned these lessons from history? Did you think you re special?
ICE now uses Mobile Fortify that does instant facial recognition and fingerprint scanning against hundreds of millions of images that looks up DHS, State Department, and state law enforcement databases. It can then do a "Super Query" that can hit multiple databases on individuals, vehicles, airplanes, vessels, addresses, phone numbers and firearms. LexisNexis will be added in the near future.
They also use Clearview AI which does facial recognition against social media and the web.
Deleting your social media accounts right before travel could be regarded as suspicious and not effective as your account data may not really be deleted.
someone just checked the incogni database, ... you didn't delete anything
Isn't someone doing something like this the exact opposite of what incogni would want considering their whole business is to 'help people remove their data' from data brokers?
lol. Did the same thing. Deleted WeChat (great for meeting Chinese women traveling and wanting to meet locals), deleted viber and everything else.
I have also nuked my hackernews account multiple times in the past and will probably do it again before my next trip.
Reddit as well.
I did something similar. I knew anything on my accounts was already in the palantir dataset used by DHS. I wanted to at least remove presence local on my phone, I didn't bring a computer abroad with me.
I went through my history and deleted twitter, x and bluesky (I didn't and still don't read them via their apps). Probably should have deleted any mastadon links that I viewed in case any were not loyal enough.
I deleted stored passwords for all social media. Deleting SMS was tedious, if you donate, they sell you number to every campaign that is considered the "enemy of the people" by the establishment. The best I could do was search for "campaign" and "Trump" and delete the SMS messages out of the Messages app.
Of course my luck was better than I expected. All I did at immigration was point out one of my kids was really tired (he was quite sick on the plane-ride home). The CBP agent said something about "I'll get you out of here soon" and that was true without a single question.
I suppose my toddler makes me look like less of a risk to national security than when I would return from solo overseas travel. I'm not going to get too comfortable though.
I mean... just get a burner phone and transfer the number over for your travel duration and call it a day seems easier than all this.
Cheapo iPhone Mini on one of the refurb sites'll run you a couple hundred bucks. Not too too bad if you just need something to connect to Wi-Fi and access maps and email with.
Isn't this exactly what they want? To quash dissent?
Yeah, probably, but you don't have to be a martyr for the cause if it means not being able to go home.
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> suing the everlasting shit out of the government when they try to detain you, which they won't, because this is just made up.
Two things
1) Suing the US government only works when they say you can sue them (see: Sovereign Immunity). Additionally, the rank-and-file have vastly extended defenses against lawsuits (see: Qualified Immunity). If an customs agent decided to get especially frisky against you, the odds of you succeeding on a lawsuit against either the agent or the US government is close to nil unless it was an extreme violation of your constitutional rights, and even then it's not in your favor.
2) We have multiple recent examples of US citizens being illegally detained by ICE agents despite showing paperwork and evidence of citizenship. If you think you're safe: You're not.
There are lots of legal carveouts for when you can't sue the government but that is not relevant to this particular discussion. Yes, there are a handful of recent examples of ICE detentions of American citizens suspected of being illegal aliens (although the only deportations I'm aware of are minor natural born citizens deported by request of their birth mother). The majority for obstruction but a handful pending deportation proceedings and held even after documentation of citizenship was produced. You've heard about them for two reasons.
1) There are very few compared to the scale of deportations currently being processed, so each case is exceptional against an incredibly low base rate. And these stories have been happening since 9/11 but journalists didn't give a shit until there was a salient political point to be scored
2) They are all suing the everlasting shit out of the government or have already settled
You've changed your argument. First you said it wasn't happening and was made up, now you're saying it's happening at an incredibly low base rate.
To be fair you raised a different point about ICE detentions as opposed to US citizens being denied reentry because of social media posts. The former happens but extremely rarely (like winning the lottery rare). The latter does not happen.
Since the election, we have social and institutional norms be torn down or routed around time and time again. While I agree that I have not seen this specific situation yet, I think you'd be a fool to blithely assume it will not happen soon. It is possible, it is (by some people in power) highly desirable, and those people have made it clear that legality is irrelevant to them.
These are not normal times, and your cynicism is not serving you well here.
EDIT: I don't believe that the parent post should have been flagged. While I disagree with them, I believe they posted productively and in good faith.
I was probably flagged for the unnecessary snark at the beginning of my post. I get it -- this isn't reddit and that sort of thing doesn't help. But I do earnestly believe that this is an almost pathological exaggeration of the state of the world.
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> Nothing has changed legally
If the law doesn’t change but the enforcement of it does, that counts as a legal change in my view.
I sympathize with some of the authors views, but deleting your accounts and going to press to brag about it seems kinda incongruent. It's like a chain smoker going to the liqueur store and bragging that he quit smoking.
No one who has 300,000 tweets has a healthy relation with social media. Not even Musk has that many!
He'll be back on ~~crack~~ social media in a month, tops.
This is just more nonsensical fear-mongering for clicks.
I deleted all of my social media accounts prior to the last presidential election. I didn't wany myself or my family becoming targets of the administration or their sycophants.
not speaking up is exactly what they want...
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