Chris Feiland, a video producer living in Turkey, was planning to visit friends in the US this year. Originally from Germany, he was keen to see New York and other American cities and reconnect with some former schoolmates.
He is now unlikely to make the trip, however, over fears he might be turned away on arrival or even detained as part of President Donald Trump’s border clampdown that also is snaring regular tourists and legal residents.
“Seriously, I'm like wondering if it's smart move, or if I want to do that to support the whole system,” Mr Feiland told The National. “It's rare, but even German citizens have been detained and held up, even green card holders.”
Since Mr Trump began his second term in January, authorities have moved to deport tens of thousands of people who are in the US illegally. But tourists and even permanent residents have also become targets of more aggressive border enforcement, sometimes ending up in protracted detention for alleged visa violations.
Britain, Germany, Ireland and several other western nations have issued travel advisories warning of heavier enforcement as border guards become increasingly assertive with visitors. In one case, a German man on a tourist visa was detained for two weeks and then deported after trying to return to the US following a brief visit to Mexico. In another widely reported incident, a French scientist was denied entry after border agents looked at his phone.
“My fear is [ending up like] these other Germans. They spent the whole holiday time in some deportation centre and spent all the money, didn't see anything and had to go back again,” Mr Feiland said.
He is one of millions of would-be visitors to the US rethinking or cancelling their plans. Fears of a hostile reception at the airport are one factor, but a broader reluctance to visit a country that is imposing tariffs on allies while forging ties with Russia and berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also a turn-off for many.
“Under Trump, I don't particularly want to help the economy there, although we would love to see our American family [on] the West Coast. For now, we're not [going],” a would-be visitor from London told The National, asking that his name not to be used. “We don't particularly feel welcome in the current political vibes.”
Tourism Economics, an influential travel forecasting firm, said it expects foreign visitor numbers to the US to drop by 9.4 per cent in 2025, almost double the 5 per cent decrease the company had forecast in February and a steep decline from a projected increase of 8.8 per cent at the start of the year.
“With each policy development, each rhetorical missive, we’re just seeing unforced error after unforced error in the administration,” Tourism Economics president Adam Sacks told AP. “It has a direct impact on international travel to the US.”
Ilana Buhl, a Texan living in Denmark, posted on TikTok and Instagram that she no longer feels comfortable visiting her native country and would not do so this year. The new mother's trepidation stemmed partly from a series of plane accidents in the US, but she said she was also worried about what might happen to her Danish husband.
“Now there are these stories coming out about Europeans and other international visitors being detained … when they enter the United States for reasons that are, like, questionable at best, illegal at worst,” Ms Buhl said. “It's kind of a surreal thing that we've gotten to this point that as a US citizen, I don't feel safe bringing my family to visit the US.”
The vast majority of the hundreds of comments on her post were from Americans saying they did not want to go home, Americans who wished they could leave, or from people who were cancelling trips to the US.
'51st state'
A major source of the drop in visitors this year is Canada, where many are incensed by Mr Trump’s insults aimed at former prime minister Justin Trudeau and repeated claims that Canada should be America's “51st state”. He has also targeted the country with tariffs, prompting a backlash so severe that Canadians see avoiding the US as something of a patriotic duty.
Charlie Angus, an MP for Canada’s centre-left New Democratic Party, urged his compatriots to steer clear of the US after a Canadian woman trying to enter the country from Mexico was detained and deported.
“I am here to say to Canadians to avoid travel to the United States if at all possible and to call our government to stand up for our Canadian citizens who are being denied their rights by arbitrary detention in the United States,” he said in a video message.
Critics said Mr Angus’s concerns are overblown as hundreds of thousands of Canadians and Americans continue to cross the border without incident.
Still, the number of Canadians returning home after the visiting the US by car dropped by 23 per cent in February, data from Statistics Canada show. Figures for March will be available on April 10.
Visitors to the US from China, meanwhile, dropped by more than 10 per cent. Visitor numbers from the UAE remained steady.
“In key origin markets, a situation with polarising Trump administration policies and rhetoric … will discourage travel to the US. Some organisations will feel pressure to avoid hosting events in the US, or sending employees to the US, cutting into business travel,” Tourism Economics noted in a February report.
Parts of the US that rely on the tourist dollar are watching the data with trepidation.
Brian Martinez, a commissioner for Grand County in Utah, home to Arches National Park and the city of Moab, said he recently attended two major travel shows in Italy and Germany. While people in Italy were excited to travel to the US, enthusiasm was muted in Germany, two big travel operators told him.
“One of the tour operators said it was because of politics, and then the other operator said it's because of the price of flights,” Mr Martinez told The National. He said that a lot of travel from Europe is booked a year ahead, so cancellations might not be fully reflected until next year.
Tourism makes up most of the economy in Moab, an outdoor wonderland with access to dazzling ancient rock formations, deep canyons and epic mountain-biking terrain. Mr Martinez said some of the city's bike shops have had tour cancellations from Canadians, many of them giving political reasons.
Another Grand County commissioner, Bill Winfield, said international visitors spend more than domestic tourists, so any drop in numbers would have an effect. But he thought doomsday predictions were overblown.
“I have yet to see a negative impact from it,” he said.
