That’s the title of a recent video by Rob Groves, who is based in the UK. Rob has a YouTube channel with nearly 60,000 subscribers, where we speak truth to power about British politics, and challenge the establishment narrative peddled by the overwhelmingly right-wing press and BBC. In the words of Noam Chomsky, ‘power knows the truth already, and is busy concealing it’. Let’s make it hard for them to do so, on Brexit, Corruption, the Economy, the NHS, Electoral Reform, Taxation, Equality, and Climate Change.” This post had 147,000 views as of this writing.

Peace, MAA

Here’s a transcript I created from the video with the help of TurboScribe.

Coming up, with sadness, I’ve decided to cancel my trip to the United States planned for this summer. Regular viewers will know that I worked in the States back in the 90s in the video game and tech industries. Later this year I was planning to go and revisit some of my old haunts in the San Francisco Bay Area and in New York, but like a growing number of others the UK government has updated its travel advice now to the United States in the wake of a crackdown on immigration by the Trump administration and I’ve become increasingly concerned that many Europeans are now being detained upon arrival in America even though they have valid travel visas.

Some of their stories are truly shocking. Stay tuned. More and more people traveling to America from Europe are finding themselves locked up.

The USA is no longer the land of the free for travelers. Under Donald Trump, it’s become the land of random detentions, xenophobic crackdowns, and political litmus tests at the border. As I say, I’ve canceled my trip this year and if you’re thinking of visiting you might want to reconsider too.

This isn’t just my advice. Germany, Canada, Denmark, Finland and the UK have all issued updated travel advisories warning their citizens about visiting Trump’s America. Why? Because what was once a routine trip could now end in handcuffs, interrogation or deportation even if you’ve done nothing wrong.

Let’s start with Rebecca Burke, for example. A young Welsh artist who was jailed for 19 days over a visa technicality. Her crime? She thought a tourist visa covered her stay, which involved providing some light domestic duties in return for accommodation.

A simple mistake that anyone could make but instead of a fine or a warning she was put into detention and invasively strip-searched. Her parents going absolutely spare with worry day after day until their young daughter was eventually deported in chains all those days later. Then there’s 25-year-old German Lukas Silaf, who was shackled and held for 16 days despite having completely valid papers.

He was visiting his fiancée in Nevada, a trip he’d made many times before. The pair decided to take her sick dog to a veterinarian in Mexico where appointments are cheaper and more available. Silaf described a tense interrogation at the border on his way back into the USA.

The border patrol officer assuming that Silaf was living unlawfully in the US, trying to skirt the 90-day maximum stay regulation by taking a short trip out of the country. Silaf said he was shackled around his stomach and feet and taken to a detention center run by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, where he was put in a cell with 128 other men. After two weeks of hell and without being told anything about his case at all, he was forced onto a flight to Munich, and he’s just one of four German nationals detained for weeks on end by ICE since the beginning of this year.

And it’s not just Europeans. Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian actress, spent 12 days sleeping on cement floors in a prison wearing a jumpsuit and in shackles just because she forgot to fill in one of the boxes on her entry form. During her stay in these horrendous conditions, she was forced to pee in a cup for a pregnancy test.

And these aren’t just rare examples that I’ve cherry-picked. They’re not even necessarily the worst examples. They’re now a commonplace feature of Trump’s policy of systemic cruelty enforced by executive orders signed with his favorite sharpie wedged between his sausage fingers.

Under the American Constitution the power of the executive, that’s basically the president, is meant to be balanced by the judiciary and by Congress. But Trump’s plethora of executive orders bypass all that rigmarole. All those checks and balances.

Trump has yet to obey a court order or send a piece of legislation for debate in Congress. Instead, he’s signing executive order after executive order acting like king. And his executive orders govern the immigration procedures being followed by ICE.

This is all on Trump personally. Germany’s government now explicitly advises its citizens that a visa doesn’t guarantee entry into the states. The UK Foreign Office has recently changed its travel advisory guidelines to emphasize that US border agents enforce rules strictly, in inverted commas, meaning one wrong answer could land you in a cell.

Finland and Denmark go further, advising transgender people that they’re at risk, citing Trump’s crackdown on transgender rights. Think about that. Countries that survived Nazi occupation and the Cold War are now telling their citizens, be careful if you’re thinking of going to America.

That’s how far the US has fallen in just a few weeks under the Trump administration. It just gets worse. A French scientist has just been denied entry after border agents scoured his phone and found some mild criticism of Trump’s policies on science and research.

The French Academy of Sciences says the scientist’s deportation seriously undermines the fundamental freedoms of the academic world. Freedom of thought, expression, and travel. ICE agents are searching phones, dissecting tweets, and using political opinions as pretext for refusal of entry.

The US is no longer a democracy welcoming dissent. It’s a paranoid state where free speech ends the moment you reach American customs. In this context, put yourself in my position for a moment.

I wanted to visit America this summer, but the Truth to Power channel has had 8 million views in the last couple of years alone, and a significant proportion of those viewers are in America. Many of my videos have been critical of Trump, Musk, and the whole MAGA cult. So, if you were me, would you go through with your plans to visit the States? I think I’d have to be mad.

I’m staying put in Europe so that I can continue to bring you my weekly videos, like this one, for which I’d really appreciate a like and for you to share a link on your social media. Also, please check that you’re subscribed with that little notification bell activated, particularly if you’ve joined as a Truth to Power channel member, as members have the option to gain early access to my videos, along with a range of other benefits. Do check out the link below.

Now, I realise that I’ve been talking so far about white Europeans and Canadians, and that’s interesting because that’s far from the usual ethnicity targeted for inhumane treatment by American ICE officials pushed by King Trump to deploy an anti-Muslim bias in their activities. Multiple reports now confirm that ICE is also targeting white non-Muslim travellers with pro-Palestinian social media posts, treating solidarity with Gaza as a national security threat. It’s no longer about discrimination against certain ethnic groups or religions.

Trump’s border goons are expanding their dragnet now. If they’ll torture a young white female Welsh artist like Rebecca Burke for a mere paperwork error, what’s stopping them from detaining a British tourist of any ethnicity whose auntie once tweeted something rude about Lauren Boebert? Or a German student who once rode on a bus with someone whose next-door neighbour attended a protest at a local Tesla distribution centre? I mean, yeah, I’m jesting, but it isn’t really funny. These circumstances are now believable in Trump’s America.

Canada’s government is warning US border agents may detain you for any perceived violation. When even America’s former closest allies don’t trust its justice system, why the hell should we? The whole world is now voting with its wallets. Tourism economics predicts a 5.1% drop in visitors to the USA this year, an 18 billion loss to the American economy.

Canadian travel to the US plummeted 24% after Trump’s trade threats. The New York Times has labelled this the Trump slump. Trump’s America First policy is making America the last choice for tourism.

And it’s a shame because the vast majority of Americans didn’t vote for this. Remember, only 32% of those Americans eligible to vote actually voted for Trump. But money spent by visitors to the US funds this regressive, authoritarian, anti-Europe, anti-free speech administration.

Every hotel stay, every meal out, every souvenir shop, it all pours taxes into an American machine that deports refugees, targets journalists, and demonises LGBTQI people. Do you really want to put money into a country with an autocratic mob boss style president empowering European enemy number one, Vladimir Putin? There are so many other countries you can visit where you won’t risk detention and shackles for a wrong think tweet or a spelling mistake on your entry paperwork. I’m really sorry not to be catching up with my former American colleagues and friends this year, but I know that each and every one of them support my decision 100%.

And several of them are themselves looking at potential exits from a country that is barely recognisable from the one I was so happy to pursue my career in just 30 short years ago. Despite what the MAGA morons believe, it’s Europe that’s the home of free speech. And until that changes, there’s no way, considering my presence on YouTube, that I could trust American border officials, not to exact some terrible revenge on me, to punish my exercise of free speech here in Europe, should I ever be mad enough to give them the opportunity to do so.

But what do you think? Please leave a comment down below. And if you’re a member of the channel, I’d do my best to read it and respond.