This is incorrect. There have been many documented incidents of US Citizens being detained and harassed upon US entry for what they say online. You can disagree about politics all you want, but the facts remain that USCBP has begun persecuting people for all sorts of things, both political and otherwise.

I think its a pretty big deal when a UK citizen who is entirely willing and capable of buying a ticket to return home is needlessly detained[0] by ICE. Same goes for the Irish guy who was injured so missed his flight home and was over his visa by three days[1]. They detained him for 3 months and barred re-entry for 10 years.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly67j35y99o

[1] https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41670047.html

My life is given meaning by my relationships with my partner and family, pursuing my passions and hobbies, semi yearly bicycle trips, petting my cat etc. Its meaning is chipped away at when I hear about random grandparents black bagged at the home depot; the idea that immense and pointless suffering is being meted out an underclass supposedly for my benefit, without any significant way to protest or stop it without focusing those dark forces upon myself.

> If you look at the Year-over-year border stats there's barely any change in denials at airports specifically.

Where are you finding data for 2025?

"They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D."

They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1933-45 - Milton Mayer