“Cruel.”

“Very confused.”

“Frightening times.”

Those are just some of the reactions from members of New York’s immigrant communities following the announcement of President Donald Trump’s new travel ban.

The restrictions, announced Wednesday, are set to take effect Monday and will most directly affect citizens traveling from 12 countries: Haiti, Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia and Libya, according to the White House’s list.

Citizens of those countries will largely be forbidden from entering the United States, with some exceptions. Additionally, citizens of seven other countries, including Venezuela and Cuba, will be denied student or tourist visas and forbidden from securing permanent U.S. residence.

Trump said the ban was needed for national security reasons, stating in a video that “nothing will stop us from keeping America safe.”

The city’s Haitian community, which numbers nearly 117,000 people according to 2020 census estimates, is by far the largest immigration population to be affected by the travel ban, followed by the Yemeni, Iranian and Afghan communities, which each number below 20,000.

Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said the latest measure amounted to “the racist exclusion of certain people.”

“ It’s not only cruel, it’s a calculated assault on immigrants and our communities who continue to be scapegoated by this administration,” Awawdeh said. “This ban is designed to spread fear and division in our communities.”

Immigrant rights activists said the measure brought to mind the battle fought over a similar travel ban, announced when Trump first took office in 2017. Courts initially blocked the measure, which barred immigrants from five predominantly Muslim countries as well as Venezuela and North Korea.

However, the Supreme Court in 2018 ruled 5-4 that the restrictions were constitutional. Legal experts said they expected the latest measure to be upheld as well, citing the wide latitude granted to the executive branch to determine immigration policy.

Awawdeh said his organization was prepared to fight the travel ban, as it had at the beginning of the first Trump administration. At the time, thousands of New Yorkers took to the streets of Lower Manhattan in protest and turned up at JFK Airport.

Rana Abdelhamid, the executive director of Malikah, a Queens-based antiviolence group that serves North African New Yorkers, said many members of the community had been bracing for a travel ban and had canceled trips abroad out of fear that they wouldn’t be allowed to return.

“ So have been dealing with extended family separation and not being able to like connect with their loved ones,” Abdelhamid said, adding that she worked with asylum-seekers from two of the countries on the list, Sudan and Chad, who had applied for asylum and are now “very confused” what their status is, in the wake of the ban.

Debbie Almontaser, the co-founder of the Yemeni American Merchants Association, said the travel ban was “clearly rooted in a desire to exclude Muslims and countless other Black and brown communities.”

In the immediate wake of the announcement, Almontaser said many in the community asked her what the implications of the ban were for their relatives living abroad.

“‘Does this mean that their visa is canceled? Does this mean they can no longer come?’” were among questions she described hearing.

“I had to say to them that this ban is going to take effect on Monday at 12:01 a.m.,” she said. “They need to get their family on a plane as soon as possible and pray that they will be allowed to enter JFK. But if they fly after Monday 12:01 a.m., they are not going to be permitted.”

“We live in frightening times,” she said.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School, said the travel ban had many “carveouts.” He said international athletes would be allowed into the country, and permanent residents and foreign citizens who are already in the country “don’t have to worry about this.”

“For other individuals from those countries, they will likely not be able to enter the United States,” he said.

Yale-Loehr said that although legal challenges were to be expected, the travel ban was likely to upheld by courts.

“ The Supreme Court held that all presidents have wide discretion when it comes to immigration because it deals with foreign affairs, particularly when that immigration effort deals with national security,” Yale-Loehr said, adding that “you’re using a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel to say that every person from a particular country is a national security risk.”

Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, said he expected the travel ban to “pass legal muster,” in part because it involved multiple factors in order to determine whether a country should be on the list.

Chishti said this likely allowed it to overcome charges that it was motivated solely by “religious animus,” as was the case in the earlier iterations of the travel ban during the first Trump administration.

““They clearly have learned a lot from the litigation last time,” Chishti said.

The ban was announced with an executive order, which stated that “these protocols enhance our ability to detect foreign nationals who may commit, aid, or support acts of terrorism, or otherwise pose a safety threat, and they aid our efforts to prevent such individuals from entering the United States.”

The order maintained that countries on the list were chosen for a variety of reasons, including their “screening and vetting capabilities,” information sharing policies, “whether each country has a significant terrorist presence within its territory” and visa-overstay rates.

In a video announcement of the travel ban, Trump cited individuals who had overstayed their visas, saying, “We don’t want ‘em.”

Elsie Saint Louis, the executive director of Haitian Americans United for Progress, rejected language in the executive order that claimed “hundreds of thousands of illegal Haitian aliens flooded into the United States during the Biden administration.”

“ They were invited. There was a parole program. That parole program was legal. These people were legally admitted,” she said. “So all of a sudden labeling in this way is unjust and inhumane.”

She said the ban would result in Haitian New Yorkers being separated from their loved ones in Haiti, and came on the heels of racialized fearmongering, including a falsehood propagated by Trump prior to the 2024 election that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating dogs.

“ This travel ban, it’s just one more blow to our community,” Saint Louis said.

This handout image obtained March 16 from El Salvador’s Presidency Press Office shows Salvadoran police officers escorting alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua recently deported by the US government to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison. El Salvador’s Presidency Press Office/Handout/Reuters

US District Judge James Boasberg vowed Friday to “get to the bottom” of whether the Trump administration violated his orders temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s use of a sweeping 18th-century wartime authority to deport some migrants.

The tense hearing centered on Trump’s controversial invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people the government accuses of being part of a Venezuelan gang. The proceedings saw Boasberg question and at times openly criticize the administration over its conduct during the case so far.

Here’s more of what the judge said during a heated hearing:

• Tough questioning on past order: Boasberg grilled DOJ lawyers over the administration’s response — or potential lack thereof — to an oral order from the judge last week. In a hearing last Saturday, the judge had ordered the government to immediately turn around planes that were carrying migrants to El Salvador under Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. The administration did not turn the planes around, saying in later court filings that it did not consider Boasberg’s order binding until a written version landed on the docket later that evening.

On Friday, Boasberg expressed doubt about the grounds for that argument, saying, “I often tell my clerks … that the most valuable treasure they possess is their reputation and their credibility. And I just ask you to make sure your team maintains that lesson.”

• “Frightening” implications: The judge also raised concerns about the policy implications of Trump’s use of the sweeping wartime authority, calling it an “unprecedented and expanded use” of the 1798 law. Boasberg said it was “awfully frightening” to think that, under the arguments pushed by Justice Department attorneys, a president could claim “that anybody is invading the United States,” necessitating another use of the wartime authority.

• Admonishment over language: Boasberg kicked off the hearing by criticizing the language and tone used by the Trump administration in some of its arguments and filings. The judge told DOJ attorney Drew Ensign that the government had used “intemperate and disrespectful” language that he’s “never seen from the United States.”

Jen Donahue can’t help but wonder whether a fellow skier took a bit of subtle revenge on her during a recent trip to Canada. Donahue and her husband, who are from California, took a trip up to Whistler, British Columbia, in March to enjoy the slopes. On their very first gondola ride up the mountain, they were seated next to a Canadian couple. While almost everyone else they met on the trip was very nice, the woman in the couple, Donahue said, was “straight mean.” She was angry about the US’s recent antagonism toward Canada, insisting Donahue and her husband make sure they buy Canadian products while on their visit and expressing dismay at the state of political affairs between the two countries.

“I think they’re taking it really personally. She felt, personally, ‘How could you do this to us? We’ve been so kind to you,'” Donahue said.

The woman’s husband eventually got her to lay off, but before they parted ways, she gave the pair of American travelers some advice on which ski run to try. “She sent us down the most awful way, and we were like, ‘Do you think she did that on purpose?'” Donahue said.

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The spring and summer travel season is upon us. It’s a time when people are excited to take a much-needed break and head out on vacation, in many cases, to a foreign destination. This year, American travelers are confronting a novel political scenario as President Donald Trump has taken a hostile stance toward countries that have historically been considered strong allies, such as Canada and those within the European Union. He’s put in place widespread tariffs. His administration has issued loud public complaints about trade and defense relations with Europe. The president keeps joking about taking Greenland from Denmark and making Canada the 51st US state in a way that seems increasingly not jokey.

For many Americans living and traveling abroad, their home nation turning into a global frenemy is making things uncomfortable. Some are rethinking their travel plans, and those who remain undeterred are bracing for some thorny conversations. In recent days, I talked to tourists and expats about how tensions were playing out in their journeys, and the consensus was that while the situation isn’t dire, it’s making things awkward. People travel to get away from reality, but this year, they’re having a harder time achieving that. As the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are — or, rather, there are your country’s politics.

Donahue goes to Whistler once a year or so, and before this past trip, she had never had a political conversation in Canada. This time around, politics came up often — people would ask about it, they’d all hesitantly laugh, and she and her husband would explain they think it “sucks,” too. “Everybody else almost felt sorry for us,” she said. “It’s embarrassing.”

Inbound travel to the US from many foreign nations is expected to take a hit this year. Flight bookings from Canada to the States have plunged this year, and Canadian airlines such as Air Canada and WestJet have reduced flights to US destinations. Bookings from Europe to the US have fallen, too. Foreign travelers are turned off by America’s inward turn and adversarial stance. They’ve also seen stories about tougher border security and travelers being detained upon entry into the US. Some countries, such as the UK and Germany, have put in place warnings for their citizens regarding travel to the US.

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American tourists may also be scaling back some of their international travel plans. An analysis from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, of third-party air travel bookings from major US hubs to major European cities found that 12.6% fewer reservations had been made so far this year for June, July, and August compared with the same period last year. The Airlines Reporting Corp., which provides air transaction data, found that both international and domestic flight sales fell in February for US-based travel agencies compared to a year ago. International sales fell less than domestic sales, but both declines are a bad sign, given booking habits.

I’m not bringing the usual pride that I have as an American.

“Because of the deeper advance discounts and higher dollar price rise closer to day of departure, summer international tends to book sooner than domestic,” Bob Mann, an aviation analyst, said in an email. He added that at a JPMorgan analyst-investor conference in March, multiple executives brought up poor recent sales, including international and transatlantic. “While one month is not a trend, it could signal an inflection point,” he said.

To be sure, if Americans do scale back on air travel this summer, it may not be because they’re worried about politics. Virgin Atlantic has said it’s seeing a slowdown in travel from the US to the UK, citing economic uncertainty. Consumers are concerned about the economy and their own income prospects, and that may lead more of them to stay home or wait on booking. Still, for some travelers, the potential for negative international attitudes may be part of the calculation.

Even if American travelers aren’t staying home, they’re readying themselves for some questions and encounters they haven’t dealt with in the past. On the American travel guru Rick Steves’ blog, there’s lengthy advice (and debate) about whether Americans are still welcome abroad. Forums on Reddit have intense discussions among expats and tourists about what to anticipate, how to handle tense situations, and a sense that this year is different from years past.

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Leila Bulling Towne, an executive coach in California, told me she’s rethinking her approach to her coming trips — she’s going to Mexico in the spring, and then in June, she’ll be in Germany and Belgium. She has both American and Irish passports, and she plans to travel with both, just in case. Bulling Towne has traveled a lot throughout her life, and she never imagined she’d be so worried about her reception as an American.

“I felt like in the past, the worst that maybe people assumed about Americans was that we were loud and maybe not polite in a church or didn’t respect someone or assumed everybody spoke English,” she said. “Now, I feel as if it’s a little I’m not bringing the usual pride that I have as an American.”

Bulling Towne has a lot of friends and family in Germany, and she said they’d been “quite honest that there’s a pretty good anti-American sentiment” there. “As much as I can try and speak the local German dialect, I’m still going to be loud and clear coming through as an American,” she added.

Carol Harms, a retired teacher from Seattle who’s doing a lot of foreign travel in her golden years, told me in an email she tries to avoid the topic of politics as much as possible in her journeys “because, on a personal level, I am ashamed” of the Trump administration’s actions. Politics talk doesn’t make for great vacation talk, but it’s sometimes unavoidable. She was just landing in London when the November election results came in, and people were “puzzled” — good-natured but curious.

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In January, on a cruise in South Africa with a lot of Brits and Australians, almost everyone asked her about the election. “Most continued to be polite but were far less cheerful than before,” she said. “One outspoken Trump supporter was avoided by most people.” Now she’s in Japan, surrounded by many Brits and Australians once again, and their attitudes have changed drastically. “Many of them are simply angry,” she said, though it’s not directed at her personally. “They feel completely let down.”

Ambrose Conroy, a management consultant from California, has found that in many of his recent business travels, his clients in Ireland and Germany are clamoring for clarity.

“A lot of these people are people that I’ve known for a very long time. I think they’re confused and frustrated by US policy,” he said. “We’re dividing the world with this right now, and unless we get simplicity and clarity, it’s going to continue to be divisive.”

Some American expats find themselves in situations where their home country is now antagonizing the country they call home. That’s the case for Elizabeth Van Horne, an English teacher from Colorado who’s been living in France since 2013. Her French accent is good enough that people don’t immediately realize that she’s American, but once they figure it out, they inevitably want to talk Trump. “He’s front and center of all those conversations,” she said. Some people treat her with a sense of concern — as though she’s gone through a natural disaster. “The vibe that I’ve been getting is pity,” she added.

It’s hard to see the place you love so much is being viewed so negatively.

She teaches English to many business students, who historically have wanted to travel to the US to visit or even launch their careers. This year, she has only one student who wants to go to America; the rest are going to try Canada, Australia, or maybe the UK. A colleague who was going to visit the US with her family has decided to delay the trip.

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“It’s hard to see the place you love so much is being viewed so negatively,” she said. Her infant son has dual citizenship, and she wonders what he’ll think of the US when he gets older, if he’ll want to visit or live there. “I don’t know what his view will be.”

The complications of traveling while American are hardly new. American tourists have long had a certain reputation — they’re loud, they’re entitled, they don’t try to speak the language. There’s a reason “tell people you’re Canadian” is common travel advice, even if that may be an urban legend. (Though reporting for this story, I did come across a Canadian who was worried people might confuse her for an American while she was abroad.)

Trump is hardly the only politician whose policies American travelers have had to reckon with while on the road. During the George W. Bush years, they had to answer questions about a president who launched two unpopular wars and a culture that tried to make “freedom fries” a thing. More recently, with President Joe Biden, they had to explain why a country would try to reelect someone so old and try to justify some of his global policies.

Tom Predhome, a retired consultant from New York who moved to Malta in 2023, said Trump is a “natural topic of conversation” when people meet Americans there, but he also found under Biden there was a lot of concern about foreign policy, namely, Israel and Gaza. “You’ll get people saying things like, ‘Oh, Biden or Trump is really no different,'” he said. In 2017, he and his wife were with a tour group in Borneo, where the topic of Trump was so contentious that things between some American tourists almost came to blows. He remembers telling the tour guide, “I’m sorry. I apologize for my country.”

The point of travel is that it’s supposed to be a way to leave worries behind. It’s a chance to escape from the day-to-day, to forget for a while about obligations and work and responsibilities — and, in theory, politics. I don’t know about you, but my idea of a good time on vacation is not lying on the beach and chatting about how Republicans are going to keep their small-margin coalition together as they negotiate the next reconciliation bill.

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But this travel season, Americans may have no choice but to face some of the Trump-composed music and deal with some less-than-friendly hosts. As much as Donahue was a little flabbergasted that the Canadian skier had sent her and her husband down a bad path, they heeded her advice with regard to what else to do while they were there. They bought Canadian products, including sweatshirts from a very obvious local brand. They tipped extra. Her husband wore the same sweatshirt with a Canadian flag and a beaver on it every day. “We wanted to blend in,” she said.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Tariff Man. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images

Experts’ reactions to President Trump’s big new protectionist push have been mostly negative. From economists, judgments have largely ranged from skeptical to horrified. In the political realm, Democrats have been almost uniformly hostile, while Republicans have generally fallen silent or hoped for the best. From the generally Trump-aligned business community, the glass-half-full opinion is that the president’s program is so obviously ill advised that he will eventually curtail or abandon it, or cut some deals and then retreat. The glass-half-empty faction is freaking out over its terrible mistake in assuming Trump didn’t mean what he said (over and over) about the need for high permanent tariffs until the end of time. The markets, to put it mildly, have not reacted well to the tariff schedule he announced on April 2, which he labeled “Liberation Day.”

If Trump persists in this strategy to build a new Fortress America, the consequences for daily life in this country will determine whether it represents a political catastrophe of historic dimensions, a consolidation of MAGA policies, or something in between. But it’s worth taking a look at public opinion as it existed before and after “Liberation Day” to determine if the public is predisposed to support or oppose the new universal tariff program before the inevitable international backlash and domestic fallout are known.

First of all, Trump’s public standing generally (at least outside his GOP base) is mixed at best and slowly but steadily deteriorating. His job-approval average according to Silver Bulletin is currently at 46.3 percent positive and 50.1 percent negative, or a net minus-3.8 percent. When he began his second term, it was at 51.6 percent positive and 40 percent negative, or plus-11.6 percent. So that’s a 15.4 percent erosion of his popularity in just over eleven weeks. Since Trump did not have (and did not pursue) any honeymoon with Democrats, and Republicans remain thrilled with him, much of this deterioration is with the independent voters who were crucial to the 47th president’s 2024 victory. An April 2 Reuters-Ipsos poll, for example, showed Trump deep underwater with independents for a job-approval ratio of 37 percent positive and 59 percent negative.

More potentially alarming for Trump are the early post-Liberation Day polls, as Silver Bulletin noted:

We’ve had three entirely post-Liberation Day polls. None of them are good for Donald Trump. In today’s new Navigator Research poll, 44 percent of registered voters approve of Trump and 53 percent disapprove. And the latest Morning Consult poll showed Trump with a net approval of -6. Even Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll — where Trump has gotten some of the most positive approval numbers of his second term — has him 4 points underwater.

At a more general level than tariffs or trade policies, Trump’s job-performance ratings for handling the economy — by general assent the most important issue in 2024 — have been mediocre with ratings on prices and inflation coming in significantly lower. An April 1 Economist-YouGov survey showed a 45 percent to 48 percent approval ratio on Trump’s handling of “jobs and the economy,” which slipped to 40 percent to 53 percent on “inflation/prices.” A March 11 NBC News poll gave Trump a 44 percent approval to 54 percent disapproval job performance rating on “the economy” and a 42 percent approval to 55 percent disapproval rating on “inflation and the cost of living.”

The post-Liberation Day Navigator Research poll noted above gave Trump his worst net job approval rating on the economy (minus 13 percent) ever, dating back to 2018.

Perhaps most impressively, a March 31 CBS News survey showed 64 percent of Americans thought Trump’s focus on lowering prices was “not enough.”

Another potential danger sign on an issue adjacent to the economy has been the deteriorating popularity of DOGE leader Elon Musk, whose profile has become exceptionally high during the first weeks of the Trump administration. The April 2 Reuters-Ipsos survey assessed Musk’s job performance at 39 percent favorable and 57 percent unfavorable (with 43 percent very unfavorable). A March 27 Marquette Law School national poll showed Musk at 38 percent favorable and 60 percent unfavorable (with 46 percent very unfavorable). This is a growing problem for Trump.

Drilling down to public attitudes about Trump’s tariffs, the Washington Post has a good summary of recent data:

A CBS News-YouGov poll last week found 56 percent of Americans oppose “placing new tariffs on goods imported from other countries.” A Fox News poll in March found most registered voters supported tariffs on products from China (55 percent). But the same poll found most opposed tariffs on products from Mexico (56 percent) and Canada (61 percent).

A Post-Ipsos poll in February, the Fox poll and a Reuters/Ipsos poll all found about 7 in 10 saying tariffs will make products U.S. consumers buy more expensive.

The Fox poll and a separate Marquette poll found majorities saying that tariffs would hurt the U.S. economy. And the Post-Ipsos poll found more Americans saying tariffs would hurt rather than help both U.S. manufacturers and workers.

To be clear, these not-so-positive assessments are being measured before prices have risen on any of the items affected by Liberation Day. They do not suggest Americans expect a good outcome for Trump’s trade war. And unlike many other aspects of the economy, negative consequences from tariffs imposed by Trump personally with a blare of trumpets can’t and won’t be blamed on his predecessor. It’s his show now.

This post has been updated.

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If passed, the bill would allow the detention of undocumented immigrants merely suspected of committing a nonviolent crime, with no protections for children or DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers. The House has already voted to approve the bill, with 48 Democrats joining every Republican to send the bill to the Senate, where it is currently being debated after a Thursday vote was postponed.

More than 70 amendments to the bill have been filed, delaying its passage further. The bill enjoys support from Senate Democrats as well, and even has two Democratic co-sponsors in Ruben Gallego and John Fetterman. Among some of the most egregious (and expensive) parts of the bill is the power it grants to state and local governments to help carry out immigrant detention, and some of the amendments concern that provision.

In Republican-led states, such as Florida, Republican leaders are offering their resources to assist in detaining immigrants in accordance with this bill, as well as Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation. But as this memo from ICE shows, the Laken Riley Act will result in chaos and massive costs for the U.S. immigration system, no matter how many states are on board. Ultimately, conservatives’ immigration dreams are just expensive fantasies.