Until now this would have been a stupid question - this is my home. But we’re in a strange timeline. My background is I was born in the UK, met first husband, married, got green card, that went tits up, divorced, met husband 2, found forever love, married, naturalized in 2021. Have my passport and everything.

It’s my dad’s birthday, and he lives in the UK. I want to go back and celebrate, but I’m nervous about reentry into the US. I naturalized during the Biden presidency, and I am a Democrat, I feel nervous that I have a target on my back. I have a home and pets here. Am I ridiculous for worrying or should I be cautious about leaving right now?

  • JcbAzPx
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    1 hour ago

    At the moment they’re only going after overt political dissidents and brown immigrants. As long as you haven’t penned an oped criticizing Trump you should be fine. Though, I would advise buying a burner phone for the trip. Set up a new account and put a bunch of games on it so it doesn’t look suspicious.

  • smokingpistol@lemm.ee
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    1 hour ago

    It’s still a stupid fucking question, You’re an American citizen point blank period.

  • iowagneiss@midwest.social
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    4 hours ago

    I only have the context of a somewhat informed person in a college financial aid office. It’s really the illegal or refugee/asylee population that has to worry right now unless you’re here as a permanent resident and have protested against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza (or as the republicans are calling it, “antisemitism”) on a billion dollar campus.

    They don’t have a strategy yet for de-naturalizing naturalized citizens (they are discussing this), but if you’re white and not Muslim, you’re probably not drawing their attention.

  • Crackhappy
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    14 hours ago

    I think it really depends on how white you are. I’m 192cm tall, born in California, white as fuck with blue eyes, so I think that I’m pretty safe. However, I’ve cautioned my sister who was born on Java that she really has to take precautions. She’s lived here and been naturalized since she was 1 years old, but even so, she’s got brown skin, so she’s a target for this RACIST AS FUCK government.

    • A_Random_Idiot
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      Oh don’t worry. They’ll come for you soon.

      They’ve already gotten away with kicking people out to a south american torture prison.

      And they are actively and openly working on how to strip citizenship from people, so they can disappear anyone to the south american torture prison.

      So you are not safe. You just have lots of brown and hispanic people infront of you to take the initial bullets.

      Which is why we all need to be stopping this shit now, because we all know how the poem ends.

      • Ashelyn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 hours ago

        Hey I don’t disagree with your points but just wanted to mention that El Salvador is in North America (in a sub-region known as Central America)

        edit: unless there are additional South American facilities they’ve been building that I’m unaware of

        • A_Random_Idiot
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          24 minutes ago

          No, I just brain farted and said south instead of central.

          Proper call out. Gonna leave my post unedited, so your callout remains relevant.

    • JakenVeina@lemm.ee
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      4 hours ago

      Also depends how much presence you have on social media, and how public you are avout your political opinions there.

    • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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      5 hours ago

      I have a close friend who was born in Venzuela, and became a citizen in January. She feels much safer now, and thinks she’s in the clear. I’m still worried about her, but i don’t want to scare her with my own anxiety.

      These MAGA Nazis want to get rid of Birthright Citizenship, which every nation in the world recognizes. If they won’t even respect that, they aren’t going to respect anything else - including Green Cards or Naturalization.

      Bottom line - if you were born in another country, you are an enemy, and they want you out.

  • Treczoks
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    13 hours ago

    You’ve still got a British passport? Consider staying out of trouble, I.e. the US.

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    17 hours ago

    As a PRC-Born, Naturalized* US Citizen, I do not feel safe entering/exiting the US borders right now. I told my PRC-Citizen father and grandmother (who lives with us) to not do any border crossings.

    *technically it’s Derivative Citizenship, Green Card holders under the age of 18 automatically become a citizen if one of the parents become a citizen

    If I were a cis-gender white person born in the US, I would probably feel okay crossing borders if I don’t have tattos and don’t have a high-profile anti-trump publicity. I would still wipe any phone before border crossings, load it up photos of my cat, and random nature photos I’ve taken. Zero political content on the device.

    You said you naturalized during Biden’s presidency, which means you’ve been citizen for less than 5 years. During this time period, if the government believes you are a terrorist, or a member of a “communist” or “totalitarian” party, they could revoke your citizenship. So maybe wait till 5 years + 1 day after your naturalization just to be safe.

    But consider permanent emigration to UK, in case things get worse in the US (I’m not saying to do it now, but keep in mind the possibility).

    Edit: So if you natualize in January 1, 2021, I’d wait till January 3, 2026, to be extra safe.

    But remember, this administration is gonna try to find every legal justification they can if they really want to get you.

  • The_Caretaker@lemm.ee
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    19 hours ago

    My advice is if you have citizenship or a visa in another country and you can leave the USA. Run and don’t look back. The USA is a place to be escaped from. Consider yourself lucky to have a place to go.

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      17 hours ago

      Kinda depends.

      For OP, yes. UK is definitely better.

      But, if your other citizenship is like Taliban-Controlled Afganistan, North Korea, El Savador, or Venezuela,or some other unstable/dictatorial country, then maybe not.

      Despite the US becoming autocratic, there are still countries that are worse.

      • starlinguk
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        They’ll merrily send you to El Salvador for looking at someone funny, though. Some disgraced sheriff didn’t like a gay makeup artist and claimed he was a Venezuelan gang member. He was picked up and has disappeared in the system in El Salvador somewhere.

        Welcome back to the Stasi.

  • BilboBargains
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    That depends what colour your skin is or if you wear any non christian headgear, symbols, etc.

      • scarabic
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        4 hours ago

        And it wouldn’t tell a citizen they are at the same risk as someone on a work visa.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        You’re ignoring the fact that these “single incidents” are essentially the administration testing what they can get away with. And there’s a lot more than just this one, if you bother to look.

        • Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          …no, I’m not. They’re very serious, and should be taken as such. But that doesn’t make them an accurate risk assessment in it of an individual incident, you need to look at numbers, for a real risk assessment

      • Melvin_Ferd
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        1 day ago

        We’re turning into trump supporters with our vilification and exaggeration of real life

    • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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      The post was a person with a work visa not a citizen. This is not to say that the US is the safest place to be. My US citizen cousin very recently came to live in the US and they were born and living in a different country for most of their life and they haven’t had any hiccups.

      I would probably not come in during Trump’s rule when there are other countries but you do you.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        The administration is currently figuring out how to “deport” natural-born citizens to an El Salvadoran Supermax prison that’s notorious for having horrendous conditions. All bets are off, regardless of citizenship. But it’s PARTICULARLY risky if you check any of the following boxes while also not being a natural-born citizen:

        • not white
        • not male
        • not cisgender
        • not straight
        • not evangelical Christian
        • not racist
        • not a vocal supporter of the regime

        There are real and concrete reasons that so many countries have started issuing travel warnings for the US to their own citizens in the last few months.

    • starlinguk
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      13 hours ago

      You do realise they’ve also been disappearing white people, right?

    • Taalnazi
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      Add queer to the list and also if you’re not a Nazi…

        • Taalnazi
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          The fascist prez: FREEDOM OF SPEECH!

          What he actually means:

          FREEDOM TO KILL PEOPLE I DON’T LIKE!

    • riodoro1
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      Hey, how did you get access to the official ICE guidelines video!?

  • dhork
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    You are now an American citizen, so you should have the rights the rest of us have. You should be fine. They haven’t gotten around to threatening to denaturalize people yet. When they do, they will concentrate first on people from countries they don’t like, that used old policies they have since rescinded. And they will have to use more due process than they are using on these non-citizens.

    The one thing I would be cautious of, though, is the state of your cell phone. They are very thin-skinned when it comes to criticism lately, and may decide to look through your phone’s social media to decide if you are insufficiently loyal. They have broad powers to do that when you re-enter the country. As a US citizen they cannot deny you entry, but they can still make your life difficult on entry. And this group doesn’t exactly pay attention to laws, do they?

    At minimum, you might want to shut down your cell phone before getting off the plane. Explain it by saying it is a long flight, and you wanted to save your battery for arrival. If they confiscate a phone and try to dump all its data, they are more limited if the phone has just rebooted. They would basically need the PIN to do anything. If you want to go further, you can also log out of all of your social media accounts and remove their apps before the flight, so they even if they force you to divulge the PIN they won’t find your social media history.

    That may all be too paranoid, but we live in stupid times.

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      As a US citizen they cannot deny you entry, but they can still make your life difficult on entry.

      Just to add, even if they obey every law, they can still mess with you a lot.

      They can:

      • Hold you for 48 Hours withiut any charges
      • Confiscate all your belongings (and probably they will try to crack any encryption on devices)
      • Put you on a no-fly list
      • Conduct targeted surveillance on you
      • Send Pegasus malware to your new phone
      • Use cell tower triangulation, doesn’t matter if its Graphene OS, it still needs to connect to cell towers if you wanna make calls or use data.
      • Randomly send agents to tail you make you feel scared, park in front of your house and constantly monitor your activity.
      • In certain scenarios, use thermal imaging to see inside your house (even though some courts have ruled against it), and it would be difficult to even prove they were illegally using thermal imaging, since its passive.

      These are all legal and previous administrations could technically already do that, it’s just that they usually weren’t this crazy.

    • pureness
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      In all fairness they seem to be detaining plenty of white women too

      • shplane
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        3 hours ago

        That’s just what gets the most media because pretty white women getting harassed by ICE will get a lot more clicks than all the brown skinned people getting harassed by ICE

      • starlinguk
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        13 hours ago

        And white men. They detained a German guy and dragged him all over the country.

      • NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
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        Yeah there’s been multiple reports of white Canadian women being detained for weeks before being let go

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          There have also been multiple articles about administration looking for ways to denaturalize citizens. They may be looking for a victim to try it out on.

    • Skullgrid
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      immigration raids snag U.S. citizens, including Native Americans

      Amazing. Where are they going to deport them to, the actual state their tribe were from before they were forced out of there and onto a barren reservation?

      I know that they’re probably deported to El Salvador because E.S. made bitcoin their national currency.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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        I know that they’re probably deported to El Salvador because E.S. made bitcoin their national currency.

        It looks like it no longer is because it was a failure. I bet they still have a way to launder bribes through their system though

        In December, 2024, El Salvador, in an agreement for a $1.4 billion loan from the IMF, agreed to reduce bitcoin purchases, removed the mandatory acceptance of Bitcoin requirement on merchants, will no longer accept tax payments with the asset, and will wind-down its involvement in the Chivo wallet.[77][78]

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_in_El_Salvador#Reaction

  • Digitalprimate
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    1 day ago

    FWIW, I have multiple things I should go to in the USA coming up, and neither I nor my family are willing to risk it. My two (young adult) children and I have dual USA - EU country citizenship. My wife had a green card when she lived with me in NYC for over a decade, but turned it in when we moved back long ago. These facts (let alone what my posting history is like) are just too much for us. We won’t risk it.

    It’s kind of like a plane crash: very unlikely to happen but you are equally unlikely to walk away unhurt.

  • SolidShake
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    Why would you want to come back? Place is a 2nd world shit hole.