Tourists to US would have to reveal five years of social media activity under new Trump plan

 

Tourists to US would have to reveal five years of social media activity under new Trump plan

 

Plan would apply to countries not currently required to get visas to the US, including Britain and France

 

Chris Michael

Wed 10 Dec 2025 19.31 CET

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/tourists-social-media-trump

 

Tourists to the United States would have to reveal their social media activity from the last five years, under new Trump administration plans.

 

The mandatory new disclosures would apply to the 42 countries whose nationals are currently permitted to enter the US without a visa, including longtime US allies Britain, France, Australia, Germany and Japan.

 

In a notice published on Tuesday, the US Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) said it would also require any telephone numbers used by visitors over the same period, and any email addresses used in the last decade, as well as face, fingerprint, DNA and iris biometrics. It would also ask for the names, addresses, birthdates and birthplaces of family members, including children.

 

CBP said the new changes to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) application were required in order to comply with an executive order issued by Donald Trump on the first day of his new term. In it, the US president called for restrictions to ensure visitors to the US “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles”.

 

The plan would throw a wrench into travel for the World Cup, which the US is co-hosting with Canada and Mexico next year. Fifa has said it expects to attract 5 million fans to the stadiums, and millions more visitors to the US, Canada and Mexico.

 

Tourism to the US has already dropped dramatically in Trump’s second term, as the president has pushed a draconian crackdown on immigrants, including recent moves to ban all asylum claims and to stop migration entirely from more than 30 countries.

 

California tourism authorities are predicting a 9% decline in foreign visits to the state this year, while Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles reported a 50% fall in foot traffic over the summer. Las Vegas, too, has been badly hit by a decline in visits, worsened by the rise of mobile gambling apps.

 

Statistics Canada said Canadian residents who made a return trip to the US by car dropped 36.9% in July 2025 compared with the same month in 2024, while commercial airline travel from Canada dropped by 25.8% in July compared with the previous year, as relations between the two countries plummeted.

 

The US has already started squeezing foreign tourism in other ways, slapping an additional $100 fee per foreign visitor per day to visit national parks, such as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, on top of the regular admission fees. Nor will national parks have free admission on Martin Luther King Jr Day any longer – but they will now be free for US residents to visit on Trump’s birthday.

 

The notice gives members of the public two months to comment. The Department of Homeland Security, under which CBP operates, did not respond to media outlets’ requests for comment. Meta, which owns two of the biggest social media platforms – Facebook and Instagram – did not immediately respond to questions.

 

The Trump administration had already launched a more widespread crackdown on visas for people hoping to live and work in the country. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said in August that it will start looking for “anti-American” views, including on social media, when assessing the applications of people wanting to live in the US.

 

The administration has also demanded that prospective foreign students unlock their social media profiles; those who refuse will be suspected of hiding their activity. Several high-profile foreign-born students have been detained for voicing support for Palestinians. The social-media policy also applies to anyone applying for an H1-B visa for skilled workers, which are now also subject to a new eye-watering $100,000 fee.

 

As recently as last week, the administration told consular officials to deny visas to anyone who might have worked in factchecking or content moderation – for example, at a social media company – accusing them in blanket terms of being “responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the US”.

 

It has suggested reducing visa lengths for foreign journalists from five years to eight months, and has started demanding any visitors who are not from the 42 visa-exempt countries pay a new $250 fee.

 

CBP claims the authority to search the devices of any prospective entrant to the US. Although entrants can refuse, they may then be denied entry. While CBP said in 2024 it searched about 47,000 devices of the 420 million people who crossed the US border that year, experts said the number may be much higher under the new Trump administration.

 

There were already fears that the World Cup could become chaotic if US immigration raids continue at the same high pace.

 

Human rights organizations have warned that Fifa risks becoming “a public relations tool of an increasingly authoritarian US government”. With cross-border travel between Mexico and the US increasingly fraught, the Sport and Rights Alliance has demanded Fifa ensure protection against “racial profiling, arbitrary detention, and unlawful immigration enforcement”, both of local communities and of visiting fans during the tournament.

 

The free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire) condemned the new tourism requirement.

 

“Those who hope to experience the wonders of the United States – from Yellowstone to Disneyland to Independence Hall – should not have to fear that self-censorship is a condition of entry,” said Sarah McLaughlin of Fire.

 

“Requiring temporary visitors here for a vacation or business to surrender five years of their social media to the US will send the message that the American commitment to free speech is pretense, not practice. This is not the behavior of a country confident in its freedoms.”