[oefrha]

That exact same article says someone has been tossed around in that system for ten months. That’s just someone among the 100-200 people they met. That same article even has photos of the system from the 2000s. There’s a photo of people sleeping on the floor wrapped in the exact kind of aluminum sheet “blankets” dated 2014. It’s been going on for very long. (Btw, I suspect it’s only getting attention now that the more-equal-than-others groups are also getting the same treatment, but I’m not going to push that point.)

And I was very clear about which part is “not new”. What a shame people can’t read. What a shame partisan commenters read “U.S. has been blah blah for a long time” and immediately jump to “Trump defender!!!”

Edit: I should also mention I literally emailed dang to get https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410548 (discussion thread for your link) restored when it was flagged.

[leftcenterright]

The links you shared in your original comment all pointed to "rejections", not "legal people being detained".

What has always been going on: people overstay their visa, depending on the scale and country, people get treated badly almost always in these cases.

What is happening now: people being critical of Trump are being rejected, legal visa holders are being detained because of the scale of the abuse.

These are clearly very different things and very much a fault of specifically Trump administration. Searching phones and messages to look for Trump critical messages .. unbelievable and totally new stuff is going on here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-f...

[oefrha]

> ... now: ... legal visa holders are being detained

I disagree. These legal visa holders are caught for small (or slightly larger) infractions, like a previous visa revocation due to running a cannabis business, sort of working (helping?) on a non-work visa, obviously planning to work on a non-work visa, etc. These could always (at least after 911?) land you in big trouble in the U.S. if you have the wrong nationality and/or skin color. I believe these were almost completely ignored by (mainstream) press because most Americans won't sympathize with them, they are obviously illegals, criminals, terrorists, etc. Now that Canadians/Western Europeans are caught in the system, suddenly people with the same infractions or suspected infractions are obviously legal visa holders.

I personally know someone with the wrong nationality and wrong color who was detained at the border (maybe not technically "detained"? let's say held) for no apparent reason for hours and got their devices searched, then released and allowed to enter. That was either 2013 or 2014. Thankfully not weeks or months.

The only fundamental change now is the bar is lowered and sympathizable (to most Westerners) people are being caught in it.

And I maintain that people who actually valued inclusion shouldn't have held conferences in the U.S. since a long time ago, if ever.

[pas]

Complete disregard for any kind of due process for a Canadian seems absolutely new. (Either she's a criminal and they charge her or she's not, and ... escort her to the airport as she said she is willing to go and pay for the flight. Suddenly treating people like enemy combatants, telling them absolutely nothing of importance, is ....)

I agree with your "this didn't start yesterday" view and with the "holding US conferences was always less than maximally inclusive" (for example because it was fucking expensive to go to Las Vegas, and because the phone searches, and ... in general the whole border patrol can do anything for miles around ports of entry)

But many things can be true at the same time. Trump found his paramilitary troops, the scale of the operation(s) and the source of the cruelty being the White House seems new. (At least since Nixon/Contra.)

[blackeyeblitzar]

> What is happening now: people being critical of Trump are being rejected, legal visa holders are being detained because of the scale of the abuse.

The agencies don’t reveal reasons why someone was denied or detained, so there is no evidence whatsoever that someone was detained for being critical of Trump. The claim that this happened is from Philippe Baptiste, a French minister for higher education who has been attacking America continuously in a bid to attract researchers from the US.

[leftcenterright]

Isn't simply the act of going through one's phone offensive enough? 0 regard for human dignity and privacy and people defending it is shocking.

[leftcenterright]

> Another AFP source said that US authorities accused the French researcher of “hateful and conspiratorial messages”.