Both Germany and the UK have released new travel warnings for their citizens heading to the US.
The updated warnings cautioned visitors were “liable to arrest or detention” if they broke new, increasingly “strict” immigration rules.
“The authorities in the US set and enforce entry rules strictly. You may be liable to arrest or detention if you break the rules,” the UK Foreign Office’s new travel advice for the US said on March 20.
On March 21, Germany’s foreign ministry said: “Criminal records in the United States, false information about the purpose of their stay, or even a slight overstay of their visa upon entry or exit can lead to arrest, detention and deportation.”
In 2024, 4 million tourists from the UK visited the US, along with 2 million from Germany.
In late January this year, 28 year-old Welsh backpacker Rebecca Burke was handcuffed and taken to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Washington State and held for 19 days.
Speaking to the BBC on March 10, Burke said: “They keep saying in all their booklets that this is not a prison. It’s hard to distinguish from my conception of a prison.”
ICE said: “All aliens in violation of US immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States regardless of nationality.”
Burke arrived home on March 20 after being released by US immigration authorities who had suspected her of a possible breach of her visa.
The Monmouthshire graphic designers’ father, Paul Burke, said his daughter had been held “in horrendous conditions” at the Tacoma Northwest detention facility, without access to a lawyer.
“She’s in this orange prison outfit,” said her father said at the time. “She was going on a four-month backpacking tourist trip. We wouldn’t even think of her as an immigrant,” he added.
Rebecca Burke had planned to stay with a US host family where she would carry out domestic chores in exchange for her accommodation and US authorities said she ought to have applied for a working visa rather than a tourist visa.
During her detention at the ICE facility, she told the BBC: “They wake us up at 6:30am. There is never enough time to sleep. It’s so cold
“I wear the same jumper for a week. They’re short or out of stuff, like blankets and extra clothes. I have one towel.”
She added many of the people she had met were “stuck” at the centre, separated from their families – in some cases for years, she said.
The backpacker was able to leave the detention centre on March 17.
The Foreign Office appeared to have changed its travel guidance for the US soon after in response. In February, the travel guidance had read simply: “The authorities in the US set and enforce entry rules.”
Welsh backpacker Rebecca Burke is in a detention centre after falling foul of US border police. But Workaway’s offer of jobs for bed and board was an accident waiting to happen @RoisinKKelly_ https://t.co/LST5IPDDxb
— Penbedw (@Penbedw) March 16, 2025
Germany also updated its travel advisory page to indicate that a visa or entry waiver did not guarantee entry to the US after several of its citizens had also been detained at the border.
Fabian Schmidt, a German-born US Green-Card holder who has lived in the US since 2007, has been held at the Wyatt Detention Centre in Rhode Island after returning to his home in New Hampshire on March 7 from a trip to Luxembourg.
On March 14, his mother, Astrid Schmidt, told Boston public broadcaster WGBH the 34-year-old was “violently interrogated” at Logan Airport for hours, stripped naked and put in a cold shower by two officials.
His lawyer, David Keller, called these “unnecessary interrogation tactics”, and said his client was being held “without clear charges or justification”.
The German electrical engineer was detained at Logan Airport for four days before being moved to the detention centre, where he currently remains. Protestors have demonstrated outside the centre for Schmidt’s release.
Schmidt had a misdemeanour charge from 2015 for possessing marijuana in his car, which Californian authorities dismissed after the State’s laws changed around marijuana possession.
“When an individual is found with drug related charges and tries to reenter the country, officers will take proper action,” said Hilton Beckham, spokeswoman from the US Customs and Border Protection agency.
Mit 16 zog Fabian Schmidt in die USA. Als er nun aus Deutschland zurückkam, nahm man ihn am Flughafen fest. Warum, weiß er nicht. Seine Mutter sorgt sich jeden Tag mehr. https://t.co/BMetYSImmR
— ZEIT ONLINE (@zeitonline) March 19, 2025
Green-Card holders possess legal residency rights in the US. Only an immigration judge could strip them of their rights to permanent residency and only if the government initiated removal proceedings against them in an immigration court.
“The final decision on whether a person can enter the US lies with the US border authorities,” said a German foreign ministry spokesperson.
The German foreign ministry website also noted: “There remains a heightened risk of politically motivated violence”, as well as that “American cities across the country are experiencing a rise in violent crime.”
Another section of the German foreign ministry’s page on US travel, entitled Legal peculiarities, features advice including “as a woman, do not swim without a top” and advice to “avoid breastfeeding in restaurants and bars, or in less liberal areas”.
