Arnie Weissmann
"Welcome to the United States! Passport and social media handles, please. It'll be a few minutes while we check some things out.
"And pay no attention to that woman shackled to a bench. That's Ms. Lennon Tyler.
"Why yes, she is an American citizen. But her fiance, Lucas Sielaff, is German. They went to Mexico, and when they returned we asked where they were heading and where they lived. He said, 'Las Vegas.' Well, to us, that was a confession that he lived in Las Vegas even though he only had a tourist visa.
"She said his English wasn't very good and that, yes, they were heading to Las Vegas, but no, he doesn't live there. She offered to translate, but we told her to be quiet and get out of the car. That's when we cuffed her to the bench and detained him.
"But don't feel too badly for her. She's only going to be locked there for about four hours. But him, that's another story. He'll be given a cold shower and a full body search, then we'll put him in a holding cell where he'll be given a bench to sleep on for a couple of days. From there, we'll transfer him to Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. He'll share a cell with eight other people.
"No, we can't tell you why he's being held instead of simply denied entry. We didn't even tell Ms. Tyler. It's kind of like Franz Kafka's book 'The Trial' where the main character is told he's under arrest and then he spends the entire book trying to understand why. Sielaff had said he'd return to Germany voluntarily, but we'll hold him for a total of 16 days, then he can go home at his expense.
"I know that sounds pretty harsh, but others have had it worse. We had another German crossing the border here, a tattoo artist, Jessica Brosche.
"We thought she might try to work while she's here, so we held her for 45 days, including a week in solitary. But then someone made a TikTok about her, and someone else came to visit her at Otay Mesa. She's back in Germany now.
"Why did we hold her rather than refuse her entry? You know I can't tell you that!
"In case you think we're just biased against Germans, that's not the case. We also held a Canadian woman, Jasmine Mooney, who applied for a U.S. work visa here at the border, which, to be honest, Canadians have been allowed to do before. But we detained her anyway, for about 12 days, in different detention centers. Wrapped her in chains at one point -- or so she says.
"Now, before you get all judgy about border agents here at the Tijuana-San Diego, crossing, you should know it's not just us. Agents up at the Canadian border held a Welsh backpacker, Becky Burke, for 19 days. She had arrangements to get free accommodations in exchange for helping around the house. That's unauthorized work!
"And a French scientist was denied entry in Houston. He says it's because there were critical comments about the president on his phone, but we say he had nuclear secrets! That sounds serious, and I'm not really sure why we only denied him entry but detained the woman for almost three weeks for doing chores in exchange for free lodging.
"Sure, their governments have noticed. The French minister of education made a big stink about the scientist. And the Mooney woman got a lot of media attention while we were holding her. The British Columbia premier, David Eby, even said 'it certainly reinforces anxiety that many Canadians have about our relationship with the U.S. right now.'
"The U.K. and Germany have both updated their travel advisories to alert their citizens that we've gotten stricter. And Finland, Denmark and Germany warned transgender citizens that we won't honor passports that have 'X' as a gender.
"Refusing entry isn't something new, by the way. In Biden's and Obama's days, we used to turn back people who came here with pre-arrangements to be pet or house sitters. Nobody got upset.
"My read is that people don't mind border enforcement, but we're being criticized for being so severe. Don't blame us! We're just following orders. We've been told in an executive order to 'vet and screen to the maximum degree possible.'
"By the way, we've almost finished going through your social media accounts. I see you're a journalist working in the travel industry and that you've written about how the U.S. inbound tourism market share hasn't yet returned to prepandemic levels. But I also saw that the U.S. Travel Association had predicted in January that there would be a 3.9% increase in visitors coming to America this year. That's great news! What could possibly slow that down?"
Correction: Welsh backpacker Becky Burke was detained for almost three weeks; an early version of this article incorrectly stated it was more than three weeks.