And masked!
Foreigners would be foolish to come here. And they know it:
Sales for the FIFA Club World Cup, a series of precursor games ahead of next year’s North American World Cup, were already lackluster when, last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection bragged online about how its agents would be “suited and booted and ready to provide security for the first round of games.”
At about the same time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC Miami they’d also be at the games providing security, and told the outlet that all non-American citizens should carry proof of their legal status.
CBP spokesperson Alan Regalado told the Miami New Times in a statement that “lawful travelers have nothing to fear from these measures.”
Actually they do. People can see what they’re doing.
Tickets to the first match, featuring soccer legend Lionel Messi’s Miami CF vs. Egypt’s Al Ahly FC at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami hit, well, rock bottom.
According to prices tracked by The Athletic, tickets that sold for $349 and up after the matches were announced in December dropped to $69.15 ahead of the Saturday night game, with tens of thousands of tickets still unsold.
The sports outlet also found a deal marketed to local college students where five tickets could be had for $20, dropping the cost per ticket to just $4.
A whole lot of soccer fans in America are Latino and foreign born. Why would they attend something like this with ICE and CBP saying they are “suited and booted up” for the event?
CBP took down the statement but obviously word got around.
Foreigners are not safe in this country even if they are perfectly legal. Check this out:
An Australian man who attended Columbia University and was returning to the United States for a holiday says he was detained and questioned for 12 hours by American border officials about his involvement in pro-Palestine activity on campus, before being deported.
Alistair Kitchen, 33, flew to Los Angeles from Melbourne on Thursday, on the way to spend two weeks in New York, where he had lived for six years while working and studying.
He said that while he was in the immigration queue at Los Angeles International Airport, his name was announced via the intercom, and he was instructed to meet an officer at the back of the room.“What began was a two-hour interview followed by 10 more hours of detention before I was put on a plane back home to Australia,” he said.
The incident is one of several similar encounters to occur at the US border since Donald Trump returned to the US presidency, with the administration cracking down on what it deems antisemitism on campus, and cancelling visas or blocking entry for people alleged to have unwelcome views.
He had scrubbed his phone but they found the offending blog posts anyway which is alarming. They were written in Australia. So they put him on a Quantas flight and told the airline not to give him back his phone until they landed. (And they complied! )
No one is safe. There is no free speech in the USA right now, especially for foreigners but it’s very dicey for citizens too if you happen to come be stopped by customs coming back into the country or dealing with ICE and the border patrol. Stasi stuff.