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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[–] astutemural@midwest.social 5 points 2 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 2 points 1 hour 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!

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 32 points 4 hours ago

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

[–] AidsKitty@lemmy.world 9 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour 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.

[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Why go to US, Germany is far more wonderful

[–] DoubleSpace@lemm.ee 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)
[–] Noodle07@lemmy.world 1 points 45 minutes ago

How about France ?

[–] vxx@lemmy.world 12 points 3 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 6 points 1 hour 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?"

[–] GoodOleAmerika@lemmy.world 49 points 6 hours ago (2 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 14 points 3 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.

[–] Underwire@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour 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.

[–] Absaroka@lemmy.world 67 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 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 39 points 7 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 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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

[–] boaratio@lemmy.world 1 points 3 minutes 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 41 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Why would anybody travel to that shithole country?

[–] ragas@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 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 19 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

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

[–] Poem_for_your_sprog@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

Ah yeah, that's fair.

[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 hours ago

Is losing your non-refundable booking a worse outcome than a few nights in a detention cell?

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works -2 points 4 hours ago

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".

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 hours ago

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

[–] mapmyhike@lemmy.world 64 points 9 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 11 points 4 hours ago

Criminal scum

[–] piefood@feddit.online 3 points 4 hours ago

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

[–] cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] theblips@lemm.ee 3 points 4 hours ago

On bike? Believe it or not, also jail.

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