this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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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.”

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[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 25 points 9 hours ago

Every time I've been to Cuba I show up in the airport and basically have a car rented, maybe first night in a hotel. Then we drive wherever we feel like and usually pick up a hitchhiker or two that will have a "sister" that has a room for rent.

It has almost always been clean, friendly, cheap, and a good breakfast. Rinse, repeat. I love travelling like this and have generally done this everywhere I've gone in the third world. Apparently the US doesn't even measure up to third world.

[–] AidsKitty@lemmy.world 15 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I saw this in an episode of border patrol Canada when a guy was coming to help his friend in Canada do yard work\landscaping. The officers said he was trying to take a Canadian job, work illegally, and was barred from entering the country.

[–] primemagnus@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 hours ago

My buddy had the same deal going into the US. Was going to take a month off and visit and while there was going to help reno his backyard. Just lifting and hammering. Another body.

Customs said literally the exact same thing to him (he was taking a job from an American) and said he could not allow entry. He tried to make it happen a year later and customs grilled him but let him enter that time.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 51 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

They're lucky they were sent home instead of to an El Salvador concentration camp.

[–] pleasegoaway@lemm.ee 14 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

They were the right color of skin.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 7 points 7 hours ago

It likely saved them, but being white still doesn't guarantee your safety from the US gulags.

[–] vxx@lemmy.world 18 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Travel advice to USA has pretty much always been to have your destination/hotel at hand for customs and your tickets for the flight back. They were also interested in how you would get to said destination, so better have a car rented in advance.

[–] BenjiRenji@feddit.org 18 points 9 hours ago

It was so silly when the immigration officer asked me (at the origin, not the destination because they want to avoid to fly you back): "And what if John won't be there to pick you up at the airport?" Me: "I don't know man, take an Uber?"

[–] astutemural@midwest.social 14 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Oh no! This dastardly Europeans wanted to come here and work! How dare they! Deport them!

This country was cooked a long time ago.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 12 points 9 hours ago

From another story about the event, it wasn't even like odd jobs for a host, it was small job remote work for people in Germany and Asia. Stuff they would be doing at home and just kept doing during downtime on a long vacation.

Don't reply to any business emails while lounging by the pool, you need a work visa for that!

[–] GoodOleAmerika@lemmy.world 59 points 14 hours ago (7 children)

This has been happening for a long time. It's just that they are from first world country. Welcome to how it feels to be from a third world country. Not only US but I have been stopped at Munich and Frankfurt airport and thoroughly scanned and document checked while everyone just walk through security.

[–] breezeblock@lemm.ee 2 points 38 minutes ago

You're saying you've been arrested, handcuffed, strip searched, sent to jail and then deported -- and that's been happening for a long time?

The people just walking were checked at departure and are local citizens.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 24 points 11 hours ago

I'm from Canada and had to explain to border officers what my accommodations and means of personal support would be for a two week stay in the US. I was almost denied entry because I wasn't carrying sufficient cash on hand.

The was almost twenty years ago.

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[–] Absaroka@lemmy.world 81 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

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.

I really want to know what changed that made the above happen much more often.

In December, if Customs had concerns about two teenagers trying to sneak into the US to work on a travel visa, where did they go? How was it handled? Because it feels like overkill and probably much more expensive than what we used to do.

Why are we sending backpacking teenagers with visa concerns to the same place as a murderer?

Why are they being strip searched like they were drug smugglers?

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.

And then this feels like the after-the-fact coverup. Whatever they held them on was super flimsy, so they tried to make it sound worse when they realized this was going to hit the news.

[–] boaratio@lemmy.world 47 points 15 hours ago (10 children)

The most shocking thing about this is the five weeks. Like as Americans we have no clue how the rest of the world lives. The entire country of France stops working for 6 weeks in the summer. And we fight to get 2 weeks if we're lucky.

[–] DoubleSpace@lemm.ee 8 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I'm a middle aged American and have never had a paid vacation.

[–] boaratio@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

I feel solidarity for you. My dad was a self employed mechanic, and the only vacation he ever took was when he broke his leg.

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[–] Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 44 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Why would anybody travel to that shithole country?

[–] ragas@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 hours ago

I guess they learned their lesson.

I think it is sad, I would really like to travel in the USA as I think the nature and the culture are really interesting. But for my entire adult life the USA actually would have been a gamble to travel to.

The laws around entry to the country are also really weird, as the immigration officer that checks your visa has the ultimate authority of whether you are allowed entry. There are no concrete laws that limit their say over this.

[–] YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca 22 points 14 hours ago (6 children)

Because people booked last year and can’t get a refund.

[–] Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 6 points 12 hours ago

Ah yeah, that's fair.

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[–] mapmyhike@lemmy.world 66 points 17 hours ago (4 children)

"We wanted to travel spontaneously."

This is how my sister and I do our road trips. We get in the car and drive until we are tired then search for a hotel. If we find a town we like we might stop there even if the day is young.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 15 points 12 hours ago

Criminal scum

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[–] thoralf@discuss.tchncs.de 171 points 21 hours ago (23 children)

I don’t get it. Why would anyone still travel to the US without being forced to?

[–] Infernal_pizza@lemm.ee 102 points 20 hours ago (13 children)

There's a significant amount of the US population who still don't realise how bad things are, you really expect everyone outside the US to be any better?

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[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 50 points 18 hours ago (17 children)

Having not fully booked your accommodation for the entire trip could get you denied entry to the US before Trump. Just saying. Especially if you aren’t white. Same with not having an outbound ticket.

[–] zaph@sh.itjust.works 15 points 14 hours ago (5 children)

Not allowed to go camping unless you're a citizen I guess

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[–] socsa@piefed.social 35 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I'm sure it happens occasionally but I've never actually heard of CPB asking for hotel bookings, just outbound flight number. This is stuff you'd submit on a visa application. If the US wants to make Europeans get visa to travel then they should just do that.

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[–] ThisOne@lemmy.world 26 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

I met a good chunk of Europeans and Aussies while thru hiking on the AT a few years ago.

All of those folks did not have full accommodations booked in advance, that would have been impossible. They seemed to find that pretty normal and were not turned away.

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[–] secretlyaddictedtolinux@lemmy.world 46 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I completely believe these women, and I am sure Border Patrol invented sentences and put them in the transcript, altering what the women said in some parts and outright making stuff up in others. People assume transcripts are correct, but any corrupt authority can alter them or attribute anything to anyone. I called the Border Patrol to find out more and they surprisingly admittted to this corruption, saying "Yep, we alter transcripts all the time in between felching each other and praising Moloch."

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