Updated June 6, 2024 at 5 p.m.*
–OpEd-
SÃO PAULO — “Why are you wearing sunglasses?
Why are you traveling alone?
What were you doing in Colombia?
What’s your job?
What brings you to the United States?
Are you carrying drugs?”
These were the questions posed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent as I collected my luggage from the conveyor belt at Houston Airport on March 16. I was returning to Texas, where I had lived for two years, completing a master’s degree at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University (A&M) and teaching until December of the previous year. This time, I was representing Agência Pública at the International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ).
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My return could not have been a more textbook example of how the current U.S. administration treats certain travelers. I’m a non-white woman — in the U.S., we’re categorized as Latin — traveling alone, and I was arriving from Colombia. Moreover, I’m a journalist.
On that Sunday in March, I told the ICE agent I was wearing the sunglasses because they had a prescription. I also explained I was traveling solo due to a work assignment in Colombia, and that I was a journalist attending a media conference in the U.S. And no, I wasn’t carrying drugs — just four bags of coffee in my suitcase, gifts for the friends who would host me in Texas, along with clothes and personal items.
The agent said he didn’t believe me. Cautiously and respectfully, I asked, “Was this stop random, or did something about me stand out?” Big mistake.
A performance to intimidate
The burly white man with a thick beard and shaved head raised his voice, seemingly offended by the question. “I think you’re lying, and I do think you’re carrying drugs. I have no reason to believe you or anyone. My only purpose is to put America’s interests first.”
Yes, he repeated U.S. President Donald Trump’s slogan word for word: “America first.” It may sound cartoonish, but it’s intimidating — and it works.
He then walked me to a private inspection area. It was a short walk, but I was nervous — after all, I’m a woman, a journalist, and I was alone in a foreign land.
The screening room held a family with two children and another solo female traveler. I handed over my suitcase keys so he could rummage through my belongings. He did not open the coffee packages, though.
Later, a U.S. friend told me his assessment of the situation: “That was a performance to threaten you. If he really suspected anything, he would have opened the coffee packs.”
Tension only eased when I mentioned Texas A&M. That local detail shifted the tone. A second officer, more polite, began chatting about the university. I quickly pivoted the conversation to Texas barbecue and college football. They returned my passport, and I was released.
I had been intimidated and targeted for my gender, my job and my nationality.
I’m not someone who cries easily, but when I walked out of that room, I broke down for three hours. I cried over politics and over personal fears. I thought about my former students at Texas A&M, the ICE agent’s face, and the family who had been screened beside me. Had they been released, or subjected to further humiliation? I cried because I knew I had been intimidated and targeted for my gender, my job and my nationality.
In 2024, I gave some leniency to my students who voted for Trump — after all, they said it was about grocery prices, right? But that day, I also cried because even those who weren’t hardcore supporters had taken the whole package: As they voted for the economy, they also accepted brutality and every form of prejudice.
On Friday, April 18, about a month after the incident, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a series of recommendations addressing this type of treatment at U.S. entry points. The organization, which advocates for press freedom, highlights risks like electronic device searches and prolonged questioning, like mine. It also published a checklist with digital security tips and the advice to carry emergency contacts on a piece of paper.
Texas, the testing ground
Texas — a well-known, wealthy conservative stronghold — has long been a testing ground for anti-immigrant and anti-DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) policies. Operation Lone Star, launched in 2021, has spent $10 billion patrolling the border with Mexico, detaining over half a million immigrants, and even infiltrating WhatsApp groups with military personnel to spy on migrants.
While Trump announced in February 2025 the end of DEI-based admissions, hiring and project funding nationwide, Texas had already passed similar legislation in April 2023.
Last year, Texas A&M Health Center suspended hormone treatments for trans students, under pressure from conservative alumni, as revealed in emails leaked to the university’s student newspaper. Even before Trump returned to office, conservative influencer Chris Rufo, of the right-wing Manhattan Institute, accused the university of “racial segregation” after a business professor promoted a conference for Black, Latino and Indigenous participants only.
What’s happening across the U.S. already happened here.
Therefore, Texas, in many ways, foreshadowed national shifts. “We’re concerned, but not surprised. What’s happening across the U.S. already happened here,” one of my former professors at A&M told me.
A&M is the largest public university in the United States by student enrollment — with over 70,000 students — and holds the eighth-largest endowment among American universities. It is a STEM-focused conservative institution and a NASA partner, but its liberal arts college has remained a space where it was still possible to work with political minorities. However, a colleague conducting research with the queer community told me he fears losing funding before completing his doctoral dissertation.
Worldcrunch 🗞 Extra!
Know more • Starting on June 9, a travel ban to the U.S. will take effect for citizens of 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti and Iran, while seven nations will face heightened restrictions. Two countries from Latin America, Venezuela and Cuba, are affected.
U.S. President Donald Trump said the measures aimed at protecting Americans “from dangerous foreign actors.” This marks the second time Trump has ordered a ban on travel from certain countries, following a similar order signed during his first term in office. While Colombia isn’t part of the list of countries facing restrictions, the U.S. president warned that other nations could be added as “threats emerge around the world.”
— Anne-Sophie Goninet (read more about the Worldcrunch method here)
On guard
We had that conversation on campus, as I used the visit to Texas to also see some friends and former professors. It was a chilly day, and we sat on a sunny bench outside the library where I was working. As he told me how cautious he is about discussing politics on social media and at work, he lowered his voice. I found myself mirroring him, thinking that if a U.S. gay man, seasoned by life in Texas, was being wary, maybe I should be too.
Another professor in the Department of Journalism and Communication told me he hadn’t changed his course material — just the language: “I still teach the same things, just using different words.” In his class, he avoids Trump’s taboo terms — diversity, equity, inclusion — but conveys the same ideas using words like multiplicity, variety, and acceptance. He also mentioned that foreign faculty, especially those from China, are afraid to leave the U.S. for holidays, fearing they won’t be let back in.
Whether through ICE agents parroting MAGA slogans, deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador, or the purge of DEI values from education, during his 100 days in office, Trump is definitely delivering his promises, through tone, action and messaging.
*Originally published May 20, 2025, this article was updated June 6, 2025 with an Extra Box on the new U.S. travel ban.
