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.”
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.
When the world thinks “illegal immigration” we all think “Germans sneaking into Hawaii”.
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!
At least they weren’t detained.
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.”I see you didn’t read the article which describes the detention in depth?
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.
They’re lucky they were sent home instead of to an El Salvador concentration camp.
They were the right color of skin.
It likely saved them, but being white still doesn’t guarantee your safety from the US gulags.
are you implying that fascists might not be reliable?
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.
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.
What is the sensationalist crap? They admitted they intended to work, probably talked too fucking much. I mean for chrissakes they even told the reporter they intend to work in another foreign country soon.
Since when Costa Rica is in the US?
What does working in a different country have to do with the US? They said they didn’t want to work in the US and that CBP falsified their testimony. As they themselves admitted it was just naiv to believe germans were excempt from the administrations pullshit.
Yes. Teenage girls not keeping their traps shut, even in front of immigration SOBs seems to be the most likely thing, here.
Oh no! This dastardly Europeans wanted to come here and work! How dare they! Deport them!
This country was cooked a long time 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!
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.
The NYPost is a crappy conservative tabloid. I don’t know why people keep posting stories from it.
They should find someone local and pay them to respond to the emails.
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.
The news decided to pay attention, that’s what changed, not the reality.
I mean yeah for non-white people maybe. But teenage German girls, that’s a novum
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.
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.
Turns out it never was a free country at all
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?”
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.
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.
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.
I don’t know the full context of your situation, but sometimes it’s easy to fall into the mindset of always feeling like a victim. I’ve seen people of all backgrounds get scanned or checked at airports. Have you considered if there might have been a specific reason you were stopped?
Personally, I’ve been stopped several times too, and in some cases, I later realized it was due to something simple, like forgetting to take keys out of my pockets, which triggered the sensors.
I just wrapped up my 46th country. Happened to me everytime and to most of the people coming from SEA and northern Africa.
I think you are really exaggerating there. It doesn’t happen for all people coming from SEA or northern Africa. You don’t see all the people from SEA or north Africa being pulled and scanned every time.
I don’t know for the US but clearly not in Europe. You really need to think about why you always getting scanned.
I have read somewhere that someone is always scanned at the airport because they were in the S database of France.
You’re comparing between different sample pools, which matters when we’re talking about probability adjacent stuff. We’re not asking “from this large pool of people at an airport, who is likely to receive additional scrutiny?” Because of this, your comment about how you’ve seen people of all backgrounds get scanned isn’t relevant to OP’s point.
The scope we’re looking at is the pool of experiences across one person’s trips. Imagine if it was every time that you got stopped for additional checks at an airport, even when you couldn’t see any mistakes that you had made. If you get checked because your keys triggered the sensors, then that’s a mistake that you can learn from, but consider how it would feel if you meticulously complied with everything you were meant to do, but were still consistently pulled aside for additional checks.
I know that on the internet, you never know whether someone is being hyperbolic, or straight up spinning a yarn, but try to take OP on faith here and consider how dismissive your comment comes across. I don’t know OP’s particular circumstances, but I have previously made a comment similar to yours to a friend, who called me out on being an asshole. Back then, I was oblivious to the reality of these things.
My friend explained that the first time they were pulled aside for additional checks, they opted to believe that it was just a random thing. The second time, they felt more uneasy, but actively resisted the “victim mentality” (their words). By the 20th time, they had come to expect it as inevitable, and that no change to how they packed, or what they wore would change things. They desperately wanted to believe that they weren’t being targeted for additional searches, but after a certain point, it becomes impossible to believe that these things are random.
Like I said, I don’t know the full context of OP’s situation—I just wanted to offer another possible explanation, which may or may not apply to them.
I’ve come across similar comments from people who are convinced they’re facing discrimination, but when you take a closer look at the facts, it’s not always so clear-cut. For example, I once saw someone say they always get rejected from jobs, often instantly, and were certain it was because of the photo on their résumé. But when you actually read their CV and look at the roles they applied for, it turned out they didn’t meet any of the listed requirements. Having two years of bootcamp experience won’t typically land you a role at a startup asking for four years in a specific tech stack.
If you always assume you’re a victim, it can prevent you from growing and might lead you to overlook areas where you could improve.
Again, I’m not denying that discrimination exists or saying OP is imagining things—I just think it’s important to consider all angles.
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.
It’s not the entire country that stops working but there’s indeed a significant reduction. If you don’t have children you’d have to be crazy to take time off work during the school holidays in summer (and also like the heat if you’re going somewhere in France because nowhere has mild temperatures anymore).
The legal minimum for full time jobs is 5 weeks but most people have more since they have jobs where you get extra rest time since you work more than 35h/week. Some affluent French people go skiing 2-3 times a year for a week or two each time and then also take two weeks off in summer, all paid.
I used to have 56 paid days off (that’s 11 weeks because Saturday and Sunday didn’t count) each year because I worked a lot more than the legally mandated hours and I had advantageous time credit for showing up early and leaving late and 4 days extra because I never took time off during school holidays (incentive to keep the shifts fully staffed). The pay was shit but at least I could go on trips all the time. I did end up getting a lot of those days paid instead because I didn’t have enough money to travel all the time and I couldn’t be bothered to stay home.
With this much time off our productivity was still very good, everything was timed and we always went above 100% of targets and long-term projects always done early.
Blue collar work in the USA looks like a scam in comparison: working the same job I would have had less purchasing power (sure the numbers entering your bank account are higher, but the health insurance alone cancels it out), more working hours and a lot less paid leave.
I’m a middle aged American and have never had a paid vacation.
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.
Why would anybody travel to that shithole country?
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.
Because people booked last year and can’t get a refund.
To anyone who was paying attention this was already a pretty clear possibility last year. Not to mention that all the people voting for this outcome also make it an unpleasant place to visit on a more personal level, even if the election had gone the other way.
You have to understand that there are people who have better things to do with their time than keep up with foreign politics or arrange their lives around it. You could just say nothing and not shit on people who don’t want to lose a thousand dollars because a nation decided to have shit for heads this season.
Well, then they have to face the consequences of not paying attention to the things happening in the place they intend to go to
Like, yeah, ideally you wouldn’t need to worry about this, but this is always a risk when traveling, and politics has that trait of being interested in you whether or not you are interested in it back
People who travel to shitholes like the US for several weeks at the time clearly don’t have “better things to do with their time”.
Ah yeah, that’s fair.
Is losing your non-refundable booking a worse outcome than a few nights in a detention cell?
“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.
Criminal scum
On bike? Believe it or not, also jail.
lol, that’s how I did my trip to Germany. I got my first hotel for only a few days, then decided when/where to go next based on that. Rinse-Repeat for a few weeks
Yeah, I’ve always travelled like this. You just get a ho(s)tel for the first few nights, and then you just stay longer if you like where you are or you move on to the next place based on what locals/other travellers recommend.
I don’t get it. Why would anyone still travel to the US without being forced to?
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?
tariffs hasnt hit the shelves yet for most people, so they are still ignorant to the situation. also they dont think rfk jrs, autism database will affect them yet.
I assure you, everyone outside of the US knows how bad the US is… the US is the laughing stock of the world right now. We get daily reminders how shit it is, how shit the economy is, how many mass shootings there were today. The world is fascinated by it, sometimes bored.
In this case with the young travellers, they have probably had the holiday booked for ages. Some people just think it wouldn’t happen to them. These sorts of checks would seem random anyway. These sorts of things appear on near every episode of Border Patrol (in Australia) where someone is being sent home because of lack of funds to sustain their length of stay etc…
Ok… so why do they still travel to the us? Do they know how bad things are but are just stupid?
Ah yes, the hive mind of all non US citizens sharing the same knowledge.
Well yeah, there are two types of people in the world: Americans and Not-Americans. So these Not-American teenagers would certainly be fully aware of the current political climate in America.
Which bit are you objecting to? If you don’t believe that the US is being portrayed by every news agency (worldwide) as a dumpster fire, you are deluded
I would guess we as outsiders think it’s worse than it is, hearing only the bad stuff. We’re not hearing about great new sales at bed bath and beyond or whatever, we’re only hearing about the heavy handed deportations and human rights violations. Which is obviously bad but its easy to confuse “probably not as bad as it sounds” with “probably not actually that bad”.
I don’t think I’m communicating the point i was trying to make very well but whatever
I assure you, most don’t. Message boards don’t contain mist people
I wouldn’t go to USA even if you pay me. To be “mistakenly” deported to El Salvador and then they fucking “don’t know” how to get you out. Fuck no.
I used to say this about 3rd world countries to avoid them, now USA is on that list. Imagine USA being that bad. Well, it is that bad now. When it was under Biden, I wouldn’t even think about it. With this orange baboon, no fucking chance you see me go to USA.
Even before, having to be treated like cattle in their border checks for hours? No thank you.
Read the article - they clearly don’t read the news, and had no idea that other Germans had already been detained.
like didn’t Germany issue a travel warning?
It was explicitly not a travel warning (“don’t go there”) but a note to be aware that an ESTA does not guarantee entry to the US. Because our authorities are lame and still want to avoid looking like they’re somehow opposed to anything the US does.
That’s actually both lame and stupid considering that getting detained by ICE is almost a guarantee
Yeeees but the US is, of course, a VALUED and RELIABLE partner and has been for decades and we, the new German government, look forward to an increasedly productive collaboration with the new Trump government regarding global matters etc. pp. bl. er. gh. 🤮
Almost all Germans entering the US are detained by ICE? They must have a lot of agents on standby for every Lufthansa flight.
They might have booked the trip before it was clear it was going to be so bad, and I doubt you can get your money back on a ticket for something like that. They probably rolled the dice and hoped for the best. It’s always been a roulette of whether you’d get a ‘good’ border patrol agent or some guy with a chip on his shoulder. It’s just that the latter feels more empowered now and there’s nobody keeping them in check.
People travel to China because there is nice stuff to see and great food to try. While US doesn’t have the great food they have the nice stuff to see and are still way better than China.
Ngl right now id rather travel to China. If I dont do anything particularly dumb it looks good for them right now to have normal tourism working, particularly when the US is being this shit.
I’d visit China before I visited the US right now.
While US doesn’t have the great food
That’s just ignorant. There’s plenty of absolutely fantastic food in the U.S.
I have no idea why anyone would visit us now, but if you manage to get past the fascist scum, there are plenty of amazing places to eat.
They were also going to Hawaii specifically. Now I’m German and have never set foot in any US state but I’d imagine Hawaii as a tropical island group would have its own local cuisine that can’t be half-bad (if you ignore the lack of beer), right?
Pork and pineapple
Exaaactly, Toast Hawaii is a staple of any good German Hausfrau. We love that shit.
This masterpiece will confirm to anyone outside of Germany that they’re not joking: Alexander Marcus - Hawaii Toast Song
As a resident of Hawaii, I have no idea what Toast Hawaii is.
Whaaaat you’re telling me toast with a slice of ham, a slice of pineapple and a slice of melted cheese on top ISN’T a centuries old traditional Hawaiian meal? The GIs have misled us!
It even has an English language entry in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toast_Hawaii
(I am being very unserious :))
You forgot the Spam.
Loosely covered under “pork?”
