21-year-old Mads Mikkelsen was travelling from Norway to the US to visit friends in New York and Austin, Texas, when he was reportedly stopped and detained by ICE agents at Newark Airport in New Jersey. Mikkelsen told his hometown newspaper, Nordlys, that he went through “harassment and [an] abuse of power” by US immigration officials as they probed him about his travel plans and intentions. “They asked direct questions about drug smuggling, terrorist plans and right-wing extremism”, he told Nordlys. “They demanded full information about everyone I was going to meet in the US, including name, address, phone number and what they did for work.” 

Ice agents also allegedly threatened the 21-year-old with a minimum $5,000 fine and five years in prison if he refused to provide them with the password to his phone. When he eventually gave them his password, they found a meme of Vice President JD Vance, with a bald egg-shaped head that went viral in March, that Vance also shared on social media. They also found a picture of Mikkelsen with a wooden pipe he crafted a few years ago. The images allegedly resulted in Mikkelsen being subject to a strip search, blood sampling, facial scan and his fingerprints being taken. “I was pushed up against a wall and strip-searched with a lot of force. They were incredibly harsh and used physical force the whole time,” Mikkelsen recalled. “I felt completely devastated and broke down and was close to crying several times.”

Mikkelsen claims he was locked in a cell for an additional five hours and was denied food and water. He was sent back to Oslo on the same day. “I don’t feel there is any point in contacting the state department, nor do I think they have any power against such a powerful and strict country as the United States,” Mikkelsen told Nordlys. 

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Ice and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), called Mikkelsen’s claims “false” and “BS”, asserting that he was not denied entry over the JD Vance meme, but over his “admitted drug use.”

Mikkelsen is one of several tourists detained and denied entry into the US. Earlier this month, Alistair Kitchen was detained when he arrived in Los Angeles from Melbourne by US Customs and Border Protection because of his writing on pro-Palestine protests at Columbia and the detention of Mahmoud Khalil. Before travelling, he had made a note to delete certain posts before coming back to the US, but he was still questioned on his views on Israel, Palestine, Hamas and more. He provided officials with the passcode to his phone, which he now deeply regrets, writing in the New Yorker that they skimmed through content that was personal, embarrassing, shameful and sexual. 

An American citizen and her German fiancé were also detained near San Diego after visiting Mexico. The German partner was forced to spend 16 days in a federal detention centre before being deported. Similarly, a Welsh backpacker was held for almost three weeks at the US-Canada crossing, and another German was detained for a month and a half, with eight days of solitary confinement, under suspicion of intent to work. None of these tourists has been charged with a crime at the time of writing. These detainments and deportations form part of the stricter immigration policies that have become a defining feature of Trump’s second term.