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Irish Examiner
3 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Suzanne Harrington: 'North Korea currently looks more enticing than the USA as a destination'
Old friends of my partner invite us to stay at their beach house on Malibu – admittedly a very small beach house, but a beach house on Malibu nevertheless. The photos are breathtaking. Yet being of sound mind, we politely decline. Thanks, but no thanks. They laugh, nodding, rolling their eyes. They get it. Another friend, a freelancer with a UK passport, is offered a fat fee to fly to Atlanta for a weekend's work – he's a photographer - but also declines. He could do with the money, but finds the prospect of entering the US, even without a fancy camera in his bag, so stressful that he decides to forfeit the cash and stay at home. He says he keeps thinking of those German teenage backpackers, Maria Lepere and Charlotte Pohl, who were strip-searched, handcuffed, body scanned, and locked in a cell overnight in Honolulu for the crime of not having booked advance accommodation, before being deported. Now Irish students are cancelling planned cultural exchange trips to the US too, rather than potentially allowing the current regime's border guards to scrutinise their social media feeds or access their phones. Imagine uniformed meatheads scrolling through your private messages, like perverts sniffing through your knicker drawer. No thanks. This is not the kind of culture fit for any form of exchange. Meanwhile, Harvard is running free online courses to educate their own citizens on the basics of their own democratic structures. Offering ordinary Americans a kind of Democracy for Dummies as they sleepwalk over the cliff into dictatorship. The current US administration's ongoing propensity for picking fights with Harvard, women's reproductive rights, Canada, people of colour, Taylor Swift, people dependent on US foreign aid, Chinese students, trans people, migrants, the EU, Bruce Springsteen, Vladimir Putin, free trade, Oprah, Beyonce, facts, free speech, science, medicine, climate safeguarding, and probably gravity itself – while endorsing genocide, white supremacy, illegal deportations, medical quackery and the pardoning of criminals – continues to give the rest of us whiplash. The kind of whiplash you get when someone you'd long regarded as perhaps a slightly racist neighbour turns out to be a raging psychopath; culturally speaking, the abrupt speed of this about-turn is causing our necks to snap. We have our list of travel no-go zones, places our consulates advise us to proceed towards with great caution, or to swerve completely. You wouldn't book a sunshine holiday in South Sudan, pursue sex tourism in Iran, shoplift in Saudi. We know about the tricky places. We proceed accordingly, or don't proceed at all. The US was never, ever on that list; we were schooled to regard it as a place of adventure and opportunity, a place where you could make it, maybe even hit the jackpot. Now, thanks to its rapid slide from jackpot to jackboot, visiting America has become about as enticing as a colposcopy. Why would you want to go there, to contribute even a single dollar to its continued existence? As a destination, North Korea currently looks more enticing, for the simple reason that North Korea is not pretending to be anything other than what it is – a mad dictatorship overseen by a mad dictator. No offence Malibu, but right now I'd rather be a tourist in Pyongyang. Read More
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Why a holiday in the US is out of the question
In the grand scheme of things, the deportation of two German teenagers, Charlotte Pohl and Maria Lepere, from Hawaii is not the most alarming thing the US administration has done recently. Yes, it is peculiar, you might even call it chilling, that you can now be ejected from America for not having sorted your accommodation before you arrived. The experience itself – handcuffs, strip-searches, body scans, prison uniforms, a night in a cell – sounds pretty harrowing. But at least they were only detained for one night. They could have been held for 12 days, like the Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney; or 16 days, like Lucas Sielaff, also German, who was driving from Mexico with his American fiancee, and says he still has nightmares about it. Marco Rubio has reassured the world that: 'If you're not coming to the United States to join a Hamas protest, or to come here and tell us about how right Hamas is, or … stir up conflict on our campuses and create riots in our streets and vandalise our universities, then you have nothing to worry about.' And in a funny sort of way, that is quite reassuring; because it makes travel to America a non-decision. Previously, you might have been on the horns of a dilemma. How authoritarian must a country become before it's morally unacceptable to go there for leisure purposes? Is it bad enough that people are being lifted off the streets and deported to El Salvador with no due process? Or can you turn a blind eye and still go to Disneyland? Rubio's statement makes it plain that the border authorities will have a problem with anyone who doesn't like their politics, and even if you had no plans to vandalise anything, that pretty much makes the decision for you. As hard as I try to focus on what this means for the new world order, there's a self-soothing voice going, 'This is not the end of the world – because you know where else is really nice? Canada.' I mean, obviously don't fly there if you're not nearish already, but it's got all the same vastness and majesty, plus you'll be able to afford eggs. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
Sky News AU
22-04-2025
- Sky News AU
German teens denied entry to the US for travelling ‘under false pretenses' and ‘intended to work': Border Patrol
A pair of backpacking German teens booted from the US lied about the purpose of their trip, Customs and Border Patrol said — but the women claim US officials 'twisted' their words to trump up the allegations. Maria Lepere and Charlotte Pohl, 18 and 19, arrived in Hawaii on March 18 with short-term travel permits ahead of weeks-long US trip but were detained by Border Patrol (CBP) and sent packing back to Germany within hours. 'These travelers were denied entry after attempting to enter the US under false pretenses. One used a Visitor visa, the other the Visa Waiver Program,' CBP officials told The Post Monday. 'Both claimed they were touring California but later admitted they intended to work — something strictly prohibited under US immigration laws for these visas.' 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. The two women, recent high school graduates, had just spent five weeks in Thailand and New Zealand and were continuing on to the US and Central America as part of a global backpacking trip when they found themselves in a CBP interrogation room in Honolulu. 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.' They said they had gone through all the necessary steps to enter and travel the US, but after hours of being held and interviewed, 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.' 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. 'We were freezing because the air conditioning was turned up so high,' Pohl said. 'The inmates fill their shampoo bottles with hot water and use them as hot water bottles to keep them warm.' And dinner wasn't any better. 'The meal consisted of two slices of toast and expired cheese. The guard warned us 'Don't eat the cheese under any circumstances,'' Lepere said. 'It was like a fever dream.' Come morning, the women were handcuffed again and taken to the airport, where they were put on a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Japan on the way back home to Germany. 'It was a shock. We didn't expect it. We had already noticed a little bit of what was going on in the US,' she said, referring to the Trump administration's crackdown of illegal immigration in the country. '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.' While they're back home, Pohl and Lepere told Ostee Zeitung they won't let the US get in the way of their globetrotting and are already laying plans for a trip to Mexico and a five-week stint in Costa Rica — where they intend to find work at a surf camp. Foreign tourism in the US has declined in recent months, so much so that Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to assure travelers that the US was safe during comments to the press earlier this month. 'I would say that if you're not coming to the United States to join a Hamas protest or to come here and tell us about how right Hamas is or to tell us about — stir up conflict on our campuses and create riots in our street and vandalize our universities, then you have nothing to worry about,' Rubio said. Originally published as German teens denied entry to the US for travelling 'under false pretences' and 'intended to work': Border Patrol
New York Post
21-04-2025
- New York Post
Deported German teens traveled to US ‘under false pretenses': Border Patrol
A pair of backpacking German teens booted from the US lied about the purpose of their trip, Customs and Border Patrol said — but the women claim US officials 'twisted' their words to trump up the allegations. Maria Lepere and Charlotte Pohl, 18 and 19, arrived in Hawaii on March 18 with short-term travel permits ahead of weeks-long US trip but were detained by Border Patrol (CBP) and sent packing back to Germany within hours. 'These travelers were denied entry after attempting to enter the US under false pretenses. One used a Visitor visa, the other the Visa Waiver Program,' CBP officials told The Post Monday. Advertisement 3 Maria Lepere, 18, and Charlotte Pohl, 19, were detained in Hawaii and deported to Germany in March. 'Both claimed they were touring California but later admitted they intended to work — something strictly prohibited under US immigration laws for these visas.' 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. Advertisement 'They contained sentences we didn't actually say,' Pohl said of interrogation transcripts they were sent home with. 3 The teens had touched down in Honolulu when they were stopped but CBP at the airport checkpoint. Skí³rzewiak – '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. The two women, recent high school graduates, had just spent five weeks in Thailand and New Zealand and were continuing on to the US and Central America as part of a global backpacking trip when they found themselves in a CBP interrogation room in Honolulu. Advertisement The teens claimed CBP targeted them because they hadn't booked hotels for their entire stay in Hawaii. 3 Pohl and Lepere wanted to spend five weeks backpacking through Hawaii — but CBP said they planned to work. Earth Pixel LLC. – '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.' They said they had gone through all the necessary steps to enter and travel the US, but after hours of being held and interviewed, CBP told them their entry was denied — and that they would be detained until their deportation. Advertisement 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 were 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. 'We were freezing because the air conditioning was turned up so high,' Pohl said. 'The inmates fill their shampoo bottles with hot water and use them as hot water bottles to keep them warm.' And dinner wasn't any better. 'The meal consisted of two slices of toast and expired cheese. The guard warned us 'Don't eat the cheese under any circumstances,'' Lepere said. 'It was like a fever dream.' Come morning, the women were handcuffed again and taken to the airport, where they were put on a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Japan on the way back home to Germany. 'It was a shock. We didn't expect it. We had already noticed a little bit of what was going on in the US,' she said, referring to the Trump administration's crackdown of illegal immigration in the country. Advertisement '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.' While they're back home, Pohl and Lepere told Ostee Zeitung they won't let the US get in the way of their globetrotting and are already laying plans for a trip to Mexico and a five-week stint in Costa Rica — where they intend to find work at a surf camp. Foreign tourism in the US has declined in recent months, so much so that Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to assure travelers that the US was safe during comments to the press earlier this month. 'I would say that if you're not coming to the United States to join a Hamas protest or to come here and tell us about how right Hamas is or to tell us about — stir up conflict on our campuses and create riots in our street and vandalize our universities, then you have nothing to worry about,' Rubio said.
Times
21-04-2025
- Times
German teenagers strip-searched by US border guards in Hawaii
Two German teenagers who arrived in Hawaii were strip-searched and detained overnight in the latest example of US border officials treating tourists harshly. Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, arrived in Honolulu on March 18 but appear to have aroused suspicions by not having accommodation booked for their entire five-week trip. They told the Ostsee-Zeitung newspaper they were made to wear prison overalls and were kept in a cell before being expelled by US Customs and Border Protection, despite both having the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (Esta) document required for entry into the country. Reports of heavy-handed treatment by border guards may be a factor in a 12 per cent decline in tourism last month compared with a year earlier, according to data
