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?
I’d probably consult a lawyer.
They can’t (legally) deny you entry into the US, but they might make your life hell when re-entering. Bring a burner phone with you in case they take your phone. Don’t keep anything even remotely political saved on there.
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.
I’d imagine it was like 0% risky.
There’s A big difference between legal immigrants and actual us citizens.
But id probably rather live in the UK if that’s an option
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.
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.
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.
which every nation in the world recognizes
Well, this is flat out not true at all 😅
There are ~30-35 that recognize some degree of birthright citizenship under certain circumstances (for example, having a parent that has citizenship), but few countries have unconditional birthright citizenship, particularly outside of the Americas.
Ok, maybe not all, but the countries we tend to equate ourselves with recognize it.
How many countries isn’t the point, anyway. It’s in the Constitution, in any case.
They’re arresting white people too.
But less often.
That’s a valid point.
Also depends how much presence you have on social media, and how public you are avout your political opinions there.
Why would you come back?
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.
Consult the chart
You do realise they’ve also been disappearing white people, right?
Add queer to the list and also if you’re not a Nazi…
Add “liberal” or even “critical of the president” to that.
The fascist prez: FREEDOM OF SPEECH!
What he actually means:
FREEDOM TO KILL PEOPLE I DON’T LIKE!
Hey, how did you get access to the official ICE guidelines video!?
Don’t risk it. Also, try to make some contingency plans in the event they do kick you out.
Tbh I’m born and raised here, and a straight white cisgender male, and I’m laying groundwork to quickly emigrate as a contingency plan.
Edit: apparently they’re now trying to figure out how to “de-naturalize” naturalized citizens, so that’s fun.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Are you white?
Trump immigration raids snag U.S. citizens, including Native Americans, raising racial profiling fears
Those who are getting caught in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement raids are being targeted because of their race or skin color, according to witnesses.
In all fairness they seem to be detaining plenty of white women too
Yeah there’s been multiple reports of white Canadian women being detained for weeks before being let go
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.
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
And white men. They detained a German guy and dragged him all over the country.
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.
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
You’ve still got a British passport? Consider staying out of trouble, I.e. the US.
That depends what colour your skin is or if you wear any non christian headgear, symbols, etc.
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.
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.
Why would you want to come back? Place is a 2nd world shit hole.
update: Blue sky users are apparently receiving threatening letters using the phrase their “parole is terminated” despite being us citizens; I can’t confirm anything, but I’m looking into it now.
so far naturalized citizens are not being harassed or detained.
everyone i’ve heard about being turned away or deported so far has a green card, visa or is in the US illegally.
it’s certainly a terrible situation and a slippery slope, but as far as I’m aware naturalized citizens are not facing that treatment yet.
https://bsky.app/profile/nicolemicheroni.bsky.social/post/3lml5ctrmmc2u
Some personal news: the Department of Homeland Security has given me, an immigration lawyer born in Newton, Massachusetts, seven days to leave the U.S. Does anyone know if you can get Italian citizenship through great-grandparents?
Italy and Ireland were like the last two countries that you could claim citizenship through great-grandparents, but I think Italy just ended it this year.
thanks for posting this, it’s the first I’ve heard of maybe a US citizen being deported.
I’m looking into related posts to find corroboration and explanation for the term “parole” used here.
it’s the first I’ve heard of maybe a US citizen being deported.
It’s been happening for years. From the Washington Post:
The U.S. government does not release data on how often ICE wrongfully detains or deports U.S. citizens. But investigations by media outlets, research institutes and oversight agencies have revealed that ICE has arrested, detained, deported and issued detainers — requests to local jails to hold a person in custody — for thousands of citizens since the agency was created in 2003. One 2011 study estimated that roughly 1 to 1.5 percent of deportees are U.S. citizens.
Thanks, I meant intentional deportations of US citizens.
Nothing says they weren’t intentional.
nothing says they were.
From what I read itsly “ended” it, but it’s not confirmed permanent yet, there will be a vote 60 days after march 28 to make it permanent. Their new restrictions are pretty extreme though. I would expect the vote to not pass, but some other version of this will get passed at some point.
It’s literally a fascist government, what do you expect. They were fairly moderate until Trump’s election basically gave them permission to go nuts.
oh shoot I just thought they got rid of the “great” part and you can still become a citizen if you have italian grandparents, what are the new restrictions?
https://www.boccadutri.com/italian-citizenship-by-descent-decree-law-36-2025/
Some resources. There’s a whole new list of requirements.
got it.
as far as I’m aware, it’s just the “great” part that changed. it’s not so much that Italian immigration laws have become overly restrictive as they were so broad before as to proving Italian heritage.
The current Italian citizenship restrictions are still a great deal easier than most other countries.
basically, as long as you have a parent or grandparent who is an Italian citizen or became one, you can become an Italian citizen also by filling out a form.
You should read the first link
Or brown.
not with regard to this specific situation, since white people have been deported or turned away due to their visa status, but under this administration anyone not white should feel way more targeted than they might be under other administrations.
Yeah as much as I like to shit on Trump, citizens are not really at much risk. Maaaaybe if you have a criminal record they could try some shit, but it would be a shift for the administration
