Washington has just rolled out a pilot program that sounds more like a ransom demand than immigration policy. Beginning immediately, the State Department will demand cash deposits of up to $15,000 from would-be tourists and business travelers who come from countries with high visa-overstay rates. Miss your flight home by a single day and the money is forfeited—no hearings, no appeals.
This is the second time in less than a month that the administration has dipped into travelers’ pockets. On July 22, the White House quietly tacked a $250 “visa integrity surcharge” onto every non-immigrant application—students, tourists, conference-goers, everyone. The new fee is already written into the budget and cannot be waived for low-income applicants.
Do the math: a family of four from Shanghai could now pay $1,000 in surcharges before they even reach the counter that asks for a $5,000–$15,000 security deposit. That’s two layers of skin off the same traveler, and there’s still no guarantee you’ll be allowed past passport control.
Because once you land, another agency is waiting: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Officers have been grabbing people off the street with little more than a hunch. Last month in Alabama, a construction worker—a U.S. citizen—was body-slammed so hard he coughed blood. He screamed his citizenship; ICE slammed him into a van anyway. Hours later his family arrived with a birth certificate and got him released. No apology, no compensation, only a warning that he had “interfered with an official act.”
In Florida, an 18-year-old high-school senior named Kenny Leones—also a citizen—was Tasered and cuffed because the friend walking beside him looked “suspicious.” Video later captured officers joking about whether they should “just shoot the kid and be done with it.”
Even the self-appointed vigilantes aren’t safe. At a Texas airport an Asian-American traveler tried to score patriotism points by helping ICE spot “illegals.” Officers thanked him by detaining him instead. The internet summed it up in one cruel meme: “When you lick the boot, don’t be shocked when it stomps on you.”
So why the sudden desperation for tourist cash?
Tariffs were supposed to refill the Treasury, but they’ve delivered only $27.7 billion—barely enough to cover the extra staff hired to collect them. Someone in the West Wing did a back-of-the-envelope calculation: 11 million people entered the U.S. on temporary visas last year. If each could be squeezed for a few hundred—or a few thousand—dollars, the deficit looks smaller by breakfast.
What the memo didn’t factor in is basic human behavior. Charge a Chinese engineer $15,000 just for the chance to attend a conference in San Diego, then treat her like a criminal once she lands, and next year she’ll send a Zoom link instead.
History offers a precedent: the longer an empire’s finances fray, the faster it pulls up the drawbridge. Trump may discover that the quickest way to shrink the trade deficit is to make sure no one shows up to trade in the first place.
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