On a gray November afternoon in Berlin, the kind where the sky seems to hover only a few meters above the rooftops, Jonas Weber sits at a café table near Hackescher Markt and tries to explain why he hasn’t booked the trip he has dreamed about since childhood. He is 29, a designer with a passport that once felt like a key to anywhere. The plan was to drive from Seattle to San Francisco with his boyfriend next spring — national parks, coastline, redwoods. “It should be simple,” he says, stirring a cappuccino. “It used to be simple.”
But lately, he says, the United States “feels like a risk you have to calculate, not a dream you just live.”
He hesitates before continuing. “I worry about the border. I worry about the politics. I worry about states where we might not be welcome.” He pauses. “It’s strange. I used to think of the U.S. as one of the easiest places in the world to visit.” He’s not alone.
Across Europe and parts of Asia, interviews suggest that travelers — especially queer travelers and those from minority backgrounds — are expressing new anxieties about visiting the United States. Their concerns extend beyond the well-publicized turbulence of U.S. politics. They reflect a more profound shift in how America is imagined: a place where immigration enforcement can seem arbitrary, where trans and queer rights depend on what highway exit you take, and where human-rights abuses tied to immigration detention circulate widely on foreign news broadcasts.
“When clients express hesitation, it’s almost always about the moment of arrival,” says Marie Ketelsen, a senior travel consultant in Copenhagen. “People fear unpredictable treatment. They worry about secondary screenings. And these are middle-class European tourists, not people at risk.”
How did a country that once marketed itself as the world’s most open society become, for some, a destination approached with caution?
On a damp winter morning in Paris, the kind where the Seine moves slowly under a low white sky, Rebecca Burke still cannot fully explain the moment her dream trip to the United States unraveled. “I was ready to go home,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to stay. I wasn’t sneaking in. I had a ticket back to London that same day.”
Burke, a 28-year-old graphic designer from Britain, had spent three weeks backpacking across America — a long-delayed journey she had planned since university. She was already through security at a New Orleans airport when an officer approached, asked a series of rapid questions, and informed her she was being detained on suspicion of overstaying her visa. Burke tried to explain: her ESTA was valid, her documents clean, her return flight already paid.
“It didn’t matter,” she says. “They told me I was an illegal alien. They shackled my hands and my feet. I remember thinking: This has to be a mistake — I’m a tourist.”
It wasn’t. Burke says she was held for 19 days in an immigration detention center. The lights stayed on all night. She described cold temperatures, no access to her phone, and difficulty contacting the British consulate. “Every hour felt like a punishment for something I didn’t do,” she says.
Her story, reported internationally, is far from isolated.
Across Europe, Canada, and Australia, travelers say that the unpredictability of entering the United States — once considered routine — has begun to feel like its own kind of risk.
A Changing Border
Trump Tourism : Join the Fight | Trump Tourism
Travel from and to the United States and the industry behind has changed under US President Donald Trump. There are new challenges, expectations, and regulations.
The roots of this anxiety stretch back to the Trump administration, when immigration enforcement intensified and federal officers — from ICE to Customs and Border Protection — gained wider latitude in detaining and questioning visitors.
“It’s not just about migrants,” says Dr. Lena Hofmann, a sociologist at the European Centre for Migration Studies. “Western tourists now know that even they can be swept up, detained, or refused entry with little explanation. That creates a climate of fear.”
In Germany, this shift became real with the case of Jessica Brösche, a 26-year-old tattoo artist who attempted to enter the U.S. from Tijuana with valid visa-waiver documentation and a return ticket to Berlin. She was detained, transferred to ICE custody, and held for weeks — including eight days in solitary confinement.
“I kept saying, ‘Call the embassy. Check my documents. I haven’t done anything,’” Brösche later told reporters. “No one listened.”
A Canadian woman, Jasmine Mooney, described being detained in a freezing cell after a visa dispute despite having a proper work visa. A New Zealand mother, Sarah Shaw, was detained for weeks with her 6-year-old son while re-entering the country from Canada — even though both held valid paperwork.
“These stories spread fast,” says Étienne Brasseur, a travel agent in Lyon. “Not because people expect it will happen to them — but because the idea that it could, that it can happen even to Europeans, breaks something about the American promise.”
Queer Travelers Reassess a Former Safe Haven
For queer travelers, the landscape is even more complex.
Perhaps the strongest voices of concern come from LGBTQ travelers, a group that for decades considered the United States a model of queer visibility and protection.
“Growing up in Italy, America was the place where you could live openly,” says Stefano Romano, a 41-year-old ad executive from Milan. “San Francisco was like Mecca for us.”
But in recent years, a wave of state-level legislation restricting transgender healthcare, drag performances and LGBTQ education has created what many abroad perceive as a patchwork of safe and unsafe zones.
For queer travelers, the uncertainty feels unusually personal.
“I’m not afraid of street crime,” says Lea Sørensen, a 33-year-old Danish traveler who postponed a trip to Florida and Georgia. “I’m afraid of ending up in a state where my identity is treated as a threat. I shouldn’t have to research state legislatures just to plan a vacation.”
Transgender travelers express particular fear.
“I love the idea of New Orleans and Austin,” says Jordan M., a trans woman from Manchester. “But TSA screenings are a nightmare for trans people, and I worry that somewhere along the trip, a police officer or a hotel clerk could turn it into something humiliating.”
European LGBTQ advocacy organizations have noticed the shift. Some have begun publishing travel guides outlining which U.S. states have explicit anti-discrimination protections — a type of warning more commonly associated with travel to Russia, parts of Africa or the Middle East.
“It’s unprecedented for Western travelers to produce safety maps for visiting the United States,” says Dr. Ana Bianchi, a human-rights researcher in Barcelona. “That alone signals a change.”
“You shouldn’t have to map your identity onto a road trip,” says Jordan M., a transgender traveler from Manchester. “I can’t believe there are parts of America where I’m scared to use a public restroom.”
Several LGBTQ travel organizations in Europe now issue U.S. safety guides — something they once reserved for Eastern Europe, parts of Africa, and countries with openly hostile policies.
Brand USA Travel Has Competition as a Tourist Destination
The hesitance is not happening in a vacuum. Other Western destinations — long overshadowed by America’s cultural dominance — have sensed an opportunity.
A Field of Competitors
As tourism hesitancy grows, the U.S. faces increasing competition from other Western destinations that project a calmer, more predictable environment.
Canada has embraced the moment. Its tourism campaigns highlight inclusivity, civil discourse, and simple visa procedures. “America without the fear factor,” as one Danish traveler described it.
Australia and New Zealand, long overshadowed by the cultural pull of the U.S. and Europe, now benefit from their reputation for safety, stable laws, and strong protections for LGBTQ rights.
Within Europe, cities like Berlin, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Barcelona — once overshadowed by the mythology of New York or San Francisco — increasingly dominate queer travel rankings.
Japan & South Korea: Modern, safe, and predictable, not Western, but often part of the same long-haul decision cluster. These destinations offer:
- exceptional public safety
- predictable border processes
- booming LGBTQ nightlife in Tokyo, Osaka, and Seoul
For many travelers who might have previously chosen New York or Los Angeles, Seoul and Tokyo now feel more exciting—and less politically stressful.
“It’s not that America has lost its unique appeal,” says João Sanches, a tourism analyst in Lisbon. “It’s that its contradictions have become harder to ignore.”
The Soft-Power Reckoning
What worries American tourism officials — though few will say it publicly — is the erosion of something fragile: the United States’ long-standing identity as a place where the world feels welcome.
“Tourism is built on trust,” says a senior official at a U.S. tourism promotion agency, speaking anonymously. “If international travelers begin to perceive the U.S. as unpredictable, hostile, or risky, that’s not a small problem — that’s a paradigm shift.”
Travel hesitation may be only one metric, but experts say it points to a broader damage to the country’s soft power. “Soft power collapses when people no longer believe a country lives up to its values,” Dr. Hofmann says. “The border is now a stage where America is sending the wrong message.”
America the Beautiful
Despite everything, many travelers remain torn. They love America — or the idea of America — but fear the reality.
“I want to see the Grand Canyon,” says Jonas Weber, the Berlin designer. “I want to drive the Pacific Coast Highway. But I want to feel safe. I want to feel like a visitor, not a suspect.”
For Burke, the British traveler shackled in New Orleans, the emotions are even more complicated.
Before her detention, she says, “America felt like the world’s main stage.” Afterward, she felt invisible — processed, ignored, punished. “I kept thinking, they don’t know me, they don’t know where I’m from, they don’t know I have a life,” she says. “To them, I was just a number.”
She has no plans to return. But others still hope.
“It’s a beautiful country,” Jonas says, staring for a moment at the postcard of California’s redwoods he keeps on his desk. “I hope one day it becomes easy to love again.”
