Summary
US immigration officers denied entry to a French scientist traveling to Houston after finding phone messages criticizing the Trump administration.
French research minister Philippe Baptiste condemned the decision, stressing the importance of academic freedom.
US authorities reportedly accused the scientist of “hateful and conspiratorial messages” but later dropped charges.
Baptiste has been vocal against Trump and Elon Musk for cutting research funding and invited American scientists to relocate to France.
Wow. What happened to the love for the constitution?
Trump is killing the USA
And boosting EU Honestly, i think trump is the best thing that happened for the EU.
Finally waking up from their USA reliance sleeping pill
Land of the free (speech)
I have anti Trump messages on my phone. Can I get a free deportation out of here? I’ll let my family sell my shit and send me the money.
No they’ll just throw citizens in internment camps
The government will keep your money probably lol
For people saying “democracy is dying”. Nope. Democracy is dead. That doesn’t mean it can’t be revived. But at this moment the US is not a democracy.
Policing thoughtcrime. You know, just small government things…
Does China do this too to people that visits the country? I’m wondering if the US is already worse than China if they’re on the same level now.
I believe they have been known to search people’a phones. I do know for sure that they ban people that are outspoken against the CCP from entering.
I lack credible sources but I assume in a similar case they just let you in and observe every move you make to make sure you don’t overreach the scope of your visit.
Now if you are known public speaker on democracy and are scheduled to speak at universities you may have more trouble but i imagine in this case you either never go there to begin with or at least carry a dummy phone for the time of your travel.
I want to know how they got access to his phone. Did he hand it over willingly? Did they run some kind of scan by connecting it to a device? Did they have a court order or authority to search it?
How do we help others avoid this sort of thing? My recommendation: start using Signal.
Anecdotal, but I think the US has been allowed to seize the electronic devices of people trying to enter the country since like forever.
They’re also weird as fuck about letting people enter the country and now it’s obviously getting even worse and lots of media attention
