US border demands your social media — and your kids’ birthdays

US border control will demand an encyclopaedia-worth of sensitive information from tourists on entry, under the Trump administration’s latest plan.

US Customs and Border Protection won’t just ask for passports anymore. They want access to your social media feeds, your email addresses, and every phone number you’ve used in the last five years — ten, if it’s a work email. They also want the names, addresses, numbers, and birth dates of your family members, including your children.

US border entry requirements

Currently the UK is one of 42 countries whose citizens the US allows to enter for up to 90 days without a full visa, but the changes to the ‘Visa Waiver Program’  will require the following non-exhaustive list of information from every would-be tourist:

a. Telephone numbers used in the last five years;

b. Email addresses used in the last ten years;

c. IP addresses and metadata from electronically submitted photos;

d. Family member names (parents, spouse, siblings, children);

e. Family members telephone numbers used in the last five years;

f. Family member dates of birth;

g. Family member places of birth;

h. Family member residencies;

i. Biometrics—face, fingerprint, DNA, and iris;

j. Business telephone numbers used in the last five years;

k. Business email addresses used in the last ten years.

In addition to this list, travellers will need to surrender all social media identities used in the preceding 5 years:

Mandatory Social Media:

In order to comply with the January 2025 Executive Order 14161 (Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats), CBP is adding social media as a mandatory data element for an ESTA application. The data element will require ESTA applicants to provide their social media from the last 5 years.

Trump’s Executive Order (EO) 14161 does not specifically mention providing social media histories. The Department of Homeland Security is using the broad scope of the EO to mandate the additional checks.

US immigration law firm Fragomen says that anyone visiting the US should expect their entry to be conditional on immigration officials searching and approving their social media. This is certain to mean that anyone who has spoken out against US imperialism and Israel’s genocide is likely to be refused.

Trump’s fascist dystopia

English author Evelyn Waugh is famously said to have told US border officials, when asked whether he had any intention of trying to overthrow the US government, that it was the reason for his visit — yet he was still allowed in. Such an outcome would be unlikely now for anyone with enough awareness and humanity to object to Israel’s crimes and US support for them. The bigger question is, why would anyone want to go to Trump’s fascist dystopia now?

Certainly that was the question posed by writer Frances Coppola when she saw the new requirements:

I am not willing to hand over personal information about my family and friends to the US administration in violation of GDPR, so if this goes through, I will not be visiting the US.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January, the US has been stuck in an ever-deepening tourism slump — down 8.2% in under a year. Reports of visitors being ‘disappeared‘ for days in Trump’s racist ICE purge, or blocked from entry over unflattering photos of US officials, have only worsened the situation.

These new demands for sensitive personal data will almost certainly push the slump into a full-scale plummet.

Featured image via the Canary