Image credits: Live and Let Fly

In a notice issued on the 9^th December 2025, by the US Customs and Border Protection Agency, the Trump Administration has announced that those wishing to travel to the US as tourists will have to reveal their social media activity from the previous five years to be allowed into the country.   

Another step forward in the American governments’ descent into fascism, it has also been announced that telephone numbers, past and current email addresses, face and fingerprints, and the birthdates and birth places of family members (including children’s) must be disclosed to gain access, legally, to the USA.   

This change will dramatically shift the tourist conditions for ESTA applicants (those eligible to travel to the US for under 90 days with no visa) from countries such as Australia, the UK and Japan. Now, foreign nationals who are openly sceptical of Trump’s administration or presidency, pro-Palestine, or in any way deviate from the right-wing extremism the republican party is pushing, will be susceptible to not being allowed into the United States.  

Allegedly, the goal of the new travel rules (proposed and filed by the Department of Homeland Security) is to honour an executive order from Trump issued in January and to protect the United States from “foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats”.  

Whilst an agent from the Customs and Border Protection agency has promised that “nothing has changed…for those coming to the United States”, this is obviously false with digital rights activists criticising the new legislative plan as being a blatant abuse of civil liberties and free speech.   

For applications to the US to be processed and accepted, all social media profiles must be made “public” so that screenings can occur, the department of homeland security warns that “if any social media information is not listed, it could lead to both current and future visas being denied”. 

Whilst the US government has attempted to legitimise this shift in foreign policy legislation persistently under the guise of ‘attempting to reduce terrorism and keep America safe’; why now and defining what ‘terrorism’ is, has been a remarkably grey area. 

Whilst not explicit, it is more than obvious that these new laws are yet another display of Zionism and support for Israel by the US. Officers carrying out these social media and additional background checks were told to screen for those who “perpetrate unlawful anti-Semitic harassment or violence”, or those who were affiliated with terrorist organisations.

The notion that the Republican party cares so deeply about the livelihoods of Jewish American citizens that they are instituting new background checks, simply to reduce antisemitism in America, is laughable. Especially, when the president himself publicly stated earlier this year that he believes the “nazis treated Jewish prisoners with love”.  

Therefore, it is obvious that these checks are not actually for the protection of Jewish Americans, rather, they are to suppress foreign nationals who are pro-Palestinian because the DHS fears the anti-imperialist rhetoric they may spread in the US. Indisputably, these new rules have been set in place to limit the free speech of those who threaten the United States’s compliance in the on-going genocide in Gaza.  

Why now is unfortunately glaringly obvious. At a time in which the American public’s support for US involvement in the Middle East is at an all-time low (with only 32% of Americans supporting the US’s military action in Gaza) it is clearly more important than ever, for American foreign policy advocates with a vested interest in Israel, to monitor and suppress the voices of those who oppose them. 

Additionally, the White House is pushing for even more draconian approaches to immigrants and asylum seekers wishing to live in the United States. These new background checks and crackdowns on social media activity are ‘coincidentally’ coinciding with the Trump administration’s vow to “permanently pause” migration from all “third world countries” following the deaths of two National Guard members at the hands of an Afghan shooter.

These new laws, undeniably, are ignorant, tactics of fearmongering, and a tool of free public-speech suppression. Both new social media background checks and increasingly harsh immigration laws, are having a (laughably predictable) detrimental impact on US tourism. These social media checks will “throw a wrench into travel for the world cup” and the 2028 summer Olympics in Los Angeles as many visitors and consumers may now be denied entry to the US. 

The California tourism authorities are predicting a “9% decline in foreign visits to the state this year”, whereas Hollywood Boulevard has reported a “50% fall in foot traffic over the summer”. Moreover, Statistics Canada said that Canadian residents who made a return trip to the US by car dropped 36.9%, while air travel from Canada to the US has dropped by 25.8%. These statistics are completely unsurprising. Simply, people do not want to visit Trump’s America and now it’s being made even harder to do so.   

Ultimately, for a Republican Party and right-wing allegedly so committed to championing free speech and being able to spew whatever hateful rhetoric they want (as they are constitutionally allowed to do); Trump’s America seems awfully committed to suppressing dissident voices, silencing free speech and undermining the majority of Americans who are against the US’s involvement in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.