I live in the U.S. (as, I think, does the person who is the subject of this article).

Maybe change your location then :P

The US have things like exit taxes etc which make it a pain to leave.

Turns out immigration in other countries isn't a cakewalk either.

Yeah that is true, sadly... I was a little too provocative without acknowledging the complexity behind it.

This. If any country won't treat you like a guest, avoid travelling to it.

If it's your own, that's harder to do – time to fight and change the system before it gets worse and will swallow you whole.

This is an increasingly popular solution. Foreign tourism has crashed.

I love the geography of the US, and it has some truly stunning places to visit.

But they're not so stunning that I need to risk my freedom - risk my freedom - to visit them in person.

I do not sell tourism services. I sell software. If there is less foreign tourism in the US, nice places will be less crowded. So, what are my incentives to ask my government to ease foreign entry to my country?

Tourism pays taxes for the government services you receive and specifically pays for upkeep of and infrastructure around attractions that you may find useful yourself.

I don't agree with the premise that the US makes entry for normal tourists particularly onerous though.

This person is a US citizen. What happens if he just said nothing (beyond identifying and answering basic questions) and refused to cooperate? How long could they hold him? As a citizen they have to allow him to enter eventually.

According to the ACLU I think this person would have been better off saying little and not wiping their phone.

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encounter...

And they would have taken his phone, pulled it apart and cloned the memory to get the data. And in a month or three, returned his phone to him in some condition which may or may not include "working".

Sounds like a better outcome to me.

Plus, unless GrapheneOS gets encryption wrong (which I doubt), cloning the memory to get the data isn't really a thing.

I've done that and they held me for about a day, strip and cavity searched me, imprisoned me, "diesel therapy" me across the state while taking me to multiple private ER claiming there were drugs up my ass to run up hospital bills in my name. They've also threatened to revoke my passport or deny me entry to the country (both failed).

They also would not allow me access to a lawyer during questioning or imprisonment.

Another woman was at the same port of entry, was raped to "check for drugs", sued, and lost. Apparently raping is a legal way to search for drugs (that were not there).