* New administration means people (including border guards) are now feeling emboldened to act in a certain way. This means people that already had that leaning, will be unabashed in their action, and middle-manager level will be less strict on stopping these behavior since it might backfire on them.
* Now suddenly the topic is interesting to the vast cohort of the population. Which means that in the media boardroom, where they decide what to cover, put out, etc, they take that in to account and report & investigate more of it. Sometimes, things that was already endemic but unnoticed get a huge bump in coverage and create a perception that it's top-down, while in reality there have always been the issue, but now it's more blatant.
Days after the Brexit vote, people went out of their way to vandalize non British business establishment. One Polish boutique was trashed and people now felt it was "ok" to leave graffiti in the form of "get out you're not welcome here". Those sentiment was always there and if you go to any immigrant community in any country and ask locals they usually have stories about it, but with the brexit vote many felt that was justified and did it in excess, which lead to media coverage. Did leave campaign say any of that, or instructed people to do anything similar? No. But part of the follower of that campaign already had the leaning to it, and it wasn't until the comparison to Kristallnacht started to pop up until the parties took a firm stance to it.
Probably same thing happening here. So the thing to watch out for is probably what would be the official reaction to it. a silent nod might just mean this is the new norm.
> Days after the Brexit vote, people went out of their way to vandalize non British business establishment. One Polish boutique was trashed and people now felt it was "ok" to leave graffiti in the form of "get out you're not welcome here".
That is also attributable to your second reason about the topic being interesting and reported in the media. The number of people who actually did things like that is tiny, but because it happened to people originating from the EU after Brexit it was newsworthy. When it happens to people from other countries or if it happened before Brexit it was not newsworthy.
We had racist stickers put on your door in the 1990s, and quite people had a lot worse happen to them in the 80s, but it was not newsworthy at the time unless it was extreme or happened to someone who was high profile or knew some jouranlists.
But it could also be that the overzealous staffers feel like they want to impress the higher ups. So it could well be happening bottom up. The administration certainly isn't jumping in to fix it when it happens. If so, that's something you need to take into account if you want to travel here.
Many are going to boycott us entirely anyway, just because of how hostile the administration is to our erstwhile allies.
Because of that I don't think this comes from the top. But doing so would be entirely in character.
That’s why I’m going to wait to believe these stories until more time has passed.
If these were just a blip come a few months, then they were a fluke.
If it becomes a pattern… well it wouldn’t be surprising…
Yeah like meta killing their DEI programs to suck up to Trump.
I don't see a similar hatred of such programs here in Europe luckily. I work for an EU company that has a big footprint in Europe and they have no plans to reduce their inclusivity programs. I'm directly involved in those.
And really, no they are not about quotas at all. It's all about being "colourblind", to remove inherent bias, exactly what the Trumpians claim to want.
Or because Zuckerberg wanted to avoid “life in prison”
Which may be worse, actually.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/31/politics/video/smr-trump-zuck...
Besides, Zuckerberg has more than enough money to evade US law if he needs to (and that's if Trump can manage to make such BS into law!). Even Snowden has successfully done that and he wasn't even rich.
He's not really at risk of going "to prison for life".
Trump probably was just grandstanding there. He makes hundreds of meaningless threats per day, to make it impossible to tell which ones he means to carry out. But they do cause fear, because you can never be 100% certain. And not even other oligarchs are safe.
https://archive.ph/zNMKP (NY Times) https://apnews.com/article/border-tourists-german-canadian-d...
Better to give always links to (reliable) sources to keep noise from shills and deniers low.
My default guess is Goodhart's Law.
The current administration expressly values 'tough' border enforcement, and it publicly uses removals and associated statistics to describe how 'tough' it is being.
Border agents respond to these incentives by looking for any excuse to deny or remove would-be entrants, minimizing the independent judgment and discretion that's an ordinary part of the job.
It's not a 'top down order', but it's an entirely predictable consequence of the administration's messaging.
This is nothing new but maybe exacerbated by the current administration. From what I gather from the news and from a European citizen point of view what’s new are the detentions.
I don't know if there are many people who want to provoke guards, at the risk of being deported, or worse. Just for the fun of telling a nice story to the medias?
> it’d be a far cry from a top down order.
Trump has been sending a clear message that bullies were getting a free pass, for instance when he pardoned the rioters. It's not because there's not a top down order that the administration isn't directly responsible.
The problem is that normal US law doesn't apply at the border. They even held an American NASA employee with a security clearance and this was before Trump.
It does look like it's getting worse now though. I'm definitely not going to the US anymore even if my work asks me to.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Kershaw#%2522Working_Towar...
You feel like, your gut tells you. And you land exactly where your beliefs are confirmed and where any response/call to action outside of the status quo is unwarranted.
If you ignored your feelings and took a look you could find the people responsible for these policies gleefully advocating to accelerate and enhance the abuses. It is easier to accept their self-serving lies and Kafkaesque legal machinations than it is to confront the realities of the world we face.
I _feel_ like the administration would brag about blocking potential European terrorists or something of this was actually going on intentionally.
My gut tells me that the people getting blocked at the border are either running into extremely overzealous border guards OR are making some kind of ruckus anyway and complaining to the media after provoking guards somehow.
Still not acceptable behavior by border guards, but it’d be a far cry from a top down order.
I guess we’ll see how often these stories keep popping up.