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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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As summer travel season draws nearer, many U.S. Green Card and visa holders are anxious about traveling outside the country, following reports of more people being detained or denied re-entry at points of entry like airports and border crossings.
The Trump administration has insisted that those who haven't broken any laws have nothing to fear about leaving or returning, but experts who spoke to Newsweek were less confident that is the case.
"The Trump administration has given permanent residents and visa holders plenty of reason to worry about running into problems trying to get back into the United States from a trip abroad," César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, the Gregory Williams Chair in civil rights & civil liberties at Ohio State University College of Law, said in an interview.
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"Anyone who isn't a U.S. citizen should think hard about the need to leave the United States, especially if they have made statements on social media that are critical of political positions that the Trump administration supports or have had even minimal contact with police."
In recent weeks, some people with legal status — either green cards or valid visas — have been denied entry or questioned at the border for a variety of reasons. On Thursday, CBP announced it had denied entry to over 320 individuals across February and March at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport alone.
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Is International Travel Safe for Green Card Holders?
"Overall there's no guarantee that you're going to be admitted to the United States, that's always been the case," Shannon Shepherd, chair of the media committee for the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) told Newsweek.
"But what we're seeing lately is more negative exercise of discretion, I guess is the way to put it, where people are being denied entry that we wouldn't necessarily have been denied before or people being detained instead of just allowed to withdraw their request for entry."
Shepherd, who also works with the firm Immigration Attorneys LLP in Chicago, said AILA had concerns that enforcement actions against green card holders in particular could increase in the coming months as travel picks up.
According to the U.S. government, it is still possible for lawful permanent residents — Green Card holders — and those with valid visas to leave and reenter the U.S., as long as they have not broken any laws or committed immigration fraud.
"The Trump Administration is enforcing immigration laws—something the previous administration failed to do," CBP Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham told Newsweek in a statement. "Those who violate these laws will be processed, detained, and removed as required.
"Green card holders who have not broken any U.S. laws, committed application fraud, or failed to apply for a re-entry permit after a long period of travel have nothing to fear about entering and exiting the country."
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Having the correct documentation when traveling is of particular importance, these experts said. For green card holders, that would mean a valid passport and green card.
If a green card is up for renewal — they're typically valid for 10 years — then the receipt from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) showing an application is under review and the expired green card is extended temporarily must also be carried.
The same applies to green card holders who obtained a temporary two-year card after marrying a U.S. citizen. While applying for the removal of conditions, a similar extension applies pending USCIS approval.
Shepherd emphasized that past criminal convictions, even minor infractions, could now be taken into account at the discretion of CBP officers at the border, along with social media comments or text messages, in order to deny entry even if the traveler has all the correct paperwork.
The attorney said she had a client who had waited years for a green card and had not traveled to see his parents in a decade. He has now canceled his trip out of fear he won't be allowed back into the U.S. He is likely not alone.
"What we've been telling our clients, and it's hard to say and it's hard to hear, but it's [to] really exercise caution and only travel if it's necessary," Shepherd said. "What I've been saying is check back with me in a month, let's if things have calmed down or if it's been made clearer what is and is not going to be flagged."
Is International Travel Safe for U.S. Visa Holders?
Immigrants without lawful permanent resident status face a bit more uncertainty.
If an individual is in the process of applying for a green card, known as Adjustment of Status (AoS), then they generally can't leave the country anyway without something called Advance Parole. This is a travel document that has to be granted by USCIS before travel, not during.
CBP explains on its website that those with valid H-1B or L-1 visas going through AoS are allowed to travel without Advance Parole, as are V- and K-3/4 nonimmigrant visa holders.
The advice from attorneys who have spoken with Newsweek is that visa holders should exercise caution and speak with their immigration lawyers before any international travel.
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The U.S. government also makes it clear on its websites that a visa only permits immigrants to reach a U.S. port of entry, such as passport control at an airport. It does not guarantee entry into the country and CBP officers who check your documents have the power to deny entry if they see a valid reason to do so.
That policy can even apply to those already with visas who have previously entered the U.S. without issue.
"The Trump team has adopted an expansive view of the power immigration law gives it to detain, deport, and strip people of legal permission that the government has previously given them to live here," García Hernández said.
"Even if courts constrain them to some extent, the ordeal of detention and exclusion isn't something anyone should take lightly. It's a lot easier to fight off deportation from inside the United States than fight to get back into the United States once outside."
Checking Social Media and Phone Messages
While CBP has been able to search phones and other electronic devices at the border for some time without a warrant, there have been increased reports of agents carrying out searches of all arrivals, including U.S. citizens.
"There is a quite small chance of a quite invasive thing happening to you at the border, and there are very few protections for those unlucky people who are subjected to this," Tom McBrien Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), told Newsweek.
Border Patrol officials say the search rate is low, at around 0.01 percent of travelers in Fiscal Year 2024. A traveler must comply with the request or risk being denied entry to the U.S. for failure to comply.
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Officers can carry out an initial search by just asking to access camera rolls or messages, but they are also able to carry out forensic searches using external devices. In some jurisdictions this requires a warrant, but not in all.
McBrien said there are a few things travelers can do to mitigate privacy concerns before traveling into the U.S., including having a secondary phone they travel with, with limited personal data on it, putting data into encrypted cloud storage, and even turning off a phone or device before reaching the border.
This is because CBP officers cannot ask for a password or passcode, which is typically required on startup, rather than face ID or a fingerprint, which an officer can essentially force a traveler to provide.
"If they ask you to provide that pin or passcode if you're an American citizen, they cannot deny you entry if you refuse to do that. If you are a visa holder, they can deny you," McBrien said. "But either way, especially if you're a U.S. citizen, you have to be aware that they can't deny you entry, but they can seize your phone."
What If You Are Detained at the Border?
If a green card or visa holder does decide to travel abroad and is pulled aside by CBP on their return to the U.S., Shepherd's advice was to be honest with officers to avoid detention or denial of entry.
"This doesn't happen so much with green card holders, but with people who have non-immigrant visas or a visitor visa, and they're coming here to visit their boyfriend or girlfriend, but they say 'I'm just here to see the Statue of Liberty' or something and then they find all these text messages to their boyfriend, it's things like that where if they had just disclosed it in the first place, that might not have been a problem," Shepherd said.
Green card and visa holders should ensure they have a record of their exit from the U.S. For permanent residents in particular, leaving for more than six months was seen by those who spoke to Newsweek for this story as particularly fraught. In those cases, the U.S. government requires more paperwork for a re-entry permit.
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The National Immigration Law Center advises those pulled aside at ports of entry to answer questions, rather than remain silent, and to seek out an attorney to be present for questions unrelated to immigration status.
For green card holders, there is no requirement to answer further questions from officers, but refusing to do so may delay entry into the U.S., according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The group also encourages immigrants to have the phone number of an attorney on hand, just in case.
Shepherd said that while all of this advice may sound extreme, she believed caution was necessary during a time of "showmanship going on from the government" which may pass once the administration has signaled to the public that it is immigration enforcement seriously.
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