‘Anxiety is palpable’: detention of researchers at US border spurs travel worries

Several high-profile incidents in the past month have scientists on edge

An immigration crackdown in the United States is rattling the global research community, with high-profile detentions and deportations of academics stoking fears even for travellers with valid entry documents.

Foreign researchers who spoke to Nature are rethinking planned trips to the United States for meetings and fieldwork. And US scientists who are not citizens are weighing their own travel plans, fearful that if they leave the country they will not be allowed to return.

“The anxiety is palpable,” says Jonathan Grode, a managing partner at the immigration law firm Green and Spiegel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Grode says he is fielding at least 20 calls a day from clients who ask if it is safe for them to travel.

High-profile cases

The pressure has been building for months as the new administration of US President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to toughen border security, takes shape.

Many scientists have been alarmed by several incidents involving academics in the past month. In one, a kidney transplant specialist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, was deported to Lebanon after trying to re-enter the United States with a valid visa. It was later reported that pictures on her phone had linked her with Hezbollah, which US authorities consider a foreign terrorist organization.

In another, US border officials detained and ejected a French scientist who was travelling to a scientific conference near Houston earlier this month. The French government says he was expelled after border officials searched his personal devices and found messages of a “personal opinion” on US research policy. The US Department of Homeland Security says that the scientist had confidential information from a US national laboratory on his devices, “in violation of a non-disclosure agreement” and that “any claim that his removal was based on political beliefs is blatantly false”.

The researcher is a planetary scientist who has worked with NASA on Mars science, multiple sources confirmed to Nature. He did not attend the conference.

Andrea Liu, a physicist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says she was “shocked” to hear of the French scientist’s experience. “It makes me think that if you really want to come and visit to do science, be on the safe side — bring a burner phone and empty laptop so this doesn’t happen to you.”

US border officials do have the right to search phones and laptops of anyone entering the country, even citizens, says Carolina Regales, an attorney at Klasko Immigration Law Partners in Philadelphia. Since 2019, applicants for visas to the United States must also submit their social-media usernames, although messages on those accounts have rarely been used to deny entry in the past, she says.

Grode says that most travellers to the United States need not fear: despite a handful of high-profile cases, hundreds of thousands of people enter the United States each month and have continued to do so smoothly, he says.

But if someone’s record is not pristine, Grode advises extra caution. A past overstayed visa or encounter with the law, even if seemingly minor, could pose a problem in the current administration, which is “being as strict as possible”, he says.

Safety concerns

Concerns over travel are particularly heightened for researchers who feel targeted by the Trump administration’s opposition to transgender rights; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes; and specific subjects of research, such as climate change and misinformation. A geophysicist from Canada, who spoke to Nature on the condition of anonymity for her safety, is now re-evaluating a planned trip to the United States in May to meet with collaborators and conduct field work. The researcher, who is a trans woman, says she doesn’t know what information US border authorities have on her from previous visits to the country, when she had identification documents under a different name.

“It seems like in the current political environment, any kind of irregularities or discrepancies are being seized on for immediate action,” she says.