Under Trump's new plan, travelers to the United States will have to report five years of their social media activity. The plan would even apply to countries that do not currently require a US visa, including the UK and France.
© AP
Travelers visiting the US will be required to report their social media activity over the past five years under a new plan from the Trump administration, writes The Guardian.
The new mandatory disclosures will apply to the 42 countries whose citizens are currently allowed visa-free entry to the United States, including longtime U.S. satellite countries Britain, France, Australia, Germany and Japan.
In an announcement issued Tuesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it will also request all phone numbers used by travelers during the same period and all email addresses used in the past decade, as well as facial biometrics, fingerprints, DNA and iris. Names, addresses, dates and places of birth of family members, including children, will also be requested.
The agency said new changes to the Electronic Travel Authorization (Esta) system are needed to enforce an executive order issued by Donald Trump on the first day of the new presidential term. In it, the US president called for restrictions to ensure that visitors to the US “do not become hostile to its citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles”.
The plan would have a significant impact on travel to the World Cup, which the United States will host next year along with Canada and Mexico, writes The Guardian. FIFA said it expected to attract 5 million fans to stadiums and millions more visitors in the US, Canada and Mexico.
U.S. tourism has plummeted during Trump's second term as the president imposed draconian measures on immigrants, including recent moves to ban all asylum claims and completely block migration from more than 30 countries.
California tourism officials predict a 9% drop in international tourists visiting the state this year, while Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles saw a 50% drop in foot traffic over the summer. Las Vegas has also been hit hard by a decline in visitors, exacerbated by the rise of mobile gambling apps.
Statistics Canada reported that the number of Canadians traveling to and from the United States by car fell 36.9% in July 2025 compared to the same month in 2024, while commercial air travel from Canada in July fell 25.8% year-over-year as relations between the two countries severely deteriorated.
The United States has begun restricting foreign travel in other ways, imposing a $100 surcharge per foreign visitor per day for entering national parks like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, on top of regular admission fees. Admission to national parks will also no longer be free on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. anymore, but Americans will now be able to visit for free on Trump's birthday.
The Trump administration has begun tightening visa requirements for those wishing to live and work in the country. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said in August that it would begin looking for “anti-American” sentiments, including on social media, when evaluating applications from people wanting to live in the United States.
The administration also requires prospective international students to unblock their social media profiles; Those who refuse will be suspected of concealing their activities. Several prominent foreign-born students have been detained for speaking out in support of the Palestinians. The social media policy also applies to anyone applying for a skilled worker H1-B visa, who are also now subject to the new $100,000 fee.
Just last week, the administration asked consular officials to deny visas to anyone who may have worked as a fact-checker or content moderator – such as a social media company – accusing them of “responsibility for censorship or complicity in censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States.”
The administration proposed reducing visa validity for foreign journalists from five years to eight months and began requiring all visitors who are not citizens of the 42 visa-exempt countries to pay a new $250 fee.
The Border Patrol says it has the right to search the devices of anyone entering the United States. Although participants may decline, they may be denied entry. While Customs and Border Protection said it screened about 47,000 devices in 2024 out of 420 million people who crossed the U.S. border that year, experts say that number could be much higher under the new Trump administration.
The Guardian writes that there have been concerns that the World Cup could become chaotic if immigration attacks on the US continue at such a pace.
Human rights groups have warned that FIFA risks becoming a “public relations tool for the increasingly authoritarian US government”. Due to the growing dangers of cross-border travel between Mexico and the United States, the Sports and Rights Coalition asked FIFA to provide protection against “racial profiling, arbitrary detention and illegal immigration controls” for both local communities and visiting fans during the tournament.
