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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[–] DicJacobus@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I know every country has its problems and that there are desperate people everywhere.

but its very much american exceptionalism, that americans would assume people coming from a country that has infinitely more worker rights, would move to their failing state just to work.

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[–] thorhop@sopuli.xyz 39 points 2 days ago

Look at those evil immigrants. No doubt they'll... they'll... hold on, can we use some AI to replace the stock photo with brown people? Thank you.

[–] obvs@lemmy.world 62 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When the world thinks "illegal immigration" we all think "Germans sneaking into Hawaii".

[–] Kinperor@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 days ago

They finally found the culprit for the shit state of the United State: It's all those pesky german young adults backpacking through the world and visiting Hawaii for like a few weeks or something!

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 8 points 1 day ago

Oh the horror! Not hard working people working for USA!

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 10 points 1 day ago

NGL, traveling to America right now is just too risky. Don't do it, for your own safety.

[–] rothaine@lemm.ee 6 points 1 day ago

Holy shit the comments on that article. I know NY Post leans right, but some of them got their noses so far up Trump's ass they're snorting small intestine

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 101 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] pleasegoaway@lemm.ee 49 points 2 days ago (2 children)

They were the right color of skin.

[–] jimmux@programming.dev 6 points 1 day ago

I've been seeing a lot of reports lately of white people getting screwed over like this. They all had one thing in common: women traveling without male company.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago

are you implying that fascists might not be reliable?

[–] Absaroka@lemmy.world 129 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] Jamablaya@lemmy.today 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The news decided to pay attention, that's what changed, not the reality.

[–] fuck_u_spez_in_particular@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I mean yeah for non-white people maybe. But teenage German girls, that's a novum

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[–] JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is pretty standard treatment. There are only a limited number of holding cells in an airport, moslty for men.

If there is no returning flight that day they are sent to a local jail (known as a remand centre outside of the US) and stripping and searching is standard at those places.

The women said that they were going to do work in the US.

[–] Absaroka@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The women said “They twisted it to make it seem as if we admitted that we wanted to work illegally in the US.”

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Per that last bit, I'm guessing they never had a lawyer present. Would make any of those fabricated statements null and void, if the constitution meant anything.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 59 points 2 days 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.

[–] thoralf@discuss.tchncs.de 217 points 3 days ago (23 children)

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

[–] Infernal_pizza@lemm.ee 132 points 3 days ago (19 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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[–] GoodOleAmerika@lemmy.world 70 points 2 days ago (15 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.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 38 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day 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.

That was almost twenty years ago.

[–] breezeblock@lemm.ee 13 points 2 days 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.

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[–] boaratio@lemmy.world 64 points 2 days ago (17 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.

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[–] mapmyhike@lemmy.world 79 points 3 days 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.

[–] Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 58 points 3 days ago (8 children)

Why would anybody travel to that shithole country?

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[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 102 points 3 days ago (2 children)

“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.”

They never think it could happen to them until it does. It already happened to Germans months ago tho and there was lots of press coverage, so this case of "i didnt know" is extra odd. I guess people just dont pay attention to actual relevant news.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 89 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They were teenagers who had spent the last 5 weeks traveling the world. They probably just didn't think keeping up with developments in the US was important. That plus a healthy dose of white privilege (and probably a wealthy background given that they were teenagers on a world tour) telling them oppression was something that happens to other people.

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[–] AidsKitty@lemmy.world 29 points 2 days ago (2 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.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

A relative of mine just had a baby, and her mom came from out-of country to meet her grandchild and help mom and dad in those first crazy weeks with a newborn.

But when she told CBP that she was "coming to help her daughter with the new baby" she got detailed and questioned for 2 hours. Eventually they let her through but they were really trying to pin her coming to work illegally on a tourism visa.

If you or a loved one are in a similar situation, just say you're "visiting family". Apparently it's a legal gray area in this shithole to help your child take care of a newborn.

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[–] primemagnus@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 days 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.

[–] astutemural@midwest.social 32 points 2 days 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 31 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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!

[–] Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is a much, much better article. I'm surprised at the NYPost's shoddy quality (though I don't know much about them); the headline especially feels misleading. Thanks for sharing a better source.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 days ago

The NYPost is a crappy conservative tabloid. I don't know why people keep posting stories from it.

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[–] vxx@lemmy.world 32 points 2 days ago (3 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.

[–] Lennnny@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

In addition, don't say anything that suggests you will work, even if unpaid. Don't mention volunteering, helping a friend, doing remote work, etc. The rules are quite specific about what visas allow and do not allow, and many border people are just there to catch a paycheck - they will absolutely err on the side of denial. It is not a fair game, and you will not be given a fair chance to explain yourself.

[–] BenjiRenji@feddit.org 31 points 2 days 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?"

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[–] Geetnerd@lemmy.world 72 points 3 days ago (9 children)

When they denying whiter than white German kids, shit done got real.

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