My Oregon Friend Fears Going on Holiday Outside the United States.
Botrugno, Salento, Puglia, Italy, April 17th, 2025.
Salaroche

The fall of the Democratic Republic of the United States won’t be at the hands of the Russians, the Chinese, the Europeans, or anybody else. It will be at the hands of the American people themselves.

My longtime friend Denn is an Anglo-Saxon American born and raised in the United States who lived most of his life in California and moved north to the State of Oregon with his wife and children some 3 decades ago. I’ve known Denn for over 40 years, which is enough time to know that in a few very important ways he is a typical American.

He loves living in his country because of the freedoms he has always enjoyed there, namely the freedom of movement, the wide range of opportunities the country offers to make a decent living, the considerable fairness in its judicial system, the variety of philosophies and religious beliefs available to him, the country’s Democratic traditions and, most importantly, the freedom of speech he has always enjoyed there.

He was always sure that he could openly express his views against any government policies he might consider against his own principles knowing that the consequences to it might be just to be rebuked by some other American with opposite views.

Those days are gone.

Over the phone the other day, he was telling me about the serious concerns he now has regarding a trip he and his wife have been planning for months to go to a friend’s wedding in Europe. “What if they refuse to let us back in?” he said.

I tried to ease his concerns telling him that the Citizen Clause in the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees that NO American citizen can be denied entry to the United States, but my efforts to comfort him seem to have fallen flat and for good reason.

If the Trump Administration keeps thumbing its nose even at decisions the Supreme Court issues against it, American citizens could soon be subjected to arbitrary arrests in the streets and face possible deportation to a mega-prison in El Salvador without any legal recourse. And if and when that happens, what would keep US immigration authorities from denying entry to the US to ANY American citizen they may deem an “enemy of the state”, meaning someone who criticizes Donald Trump?

My friend is not wrong in fearing to go out of the US on holiday and then being denied re-entry on his way back home. That is no longer a farfetched possibility. All the immigration authorities at the Airport would have to do is search the text messages in his phone and find there any negative comments against Trump and that might be enough to arrest him at the airport and then send him to an ICE detention center in Arizona or somewhere else.

The sad, tragic part in my friend’s predicament is the fact that his fears are NOT unfounded at all. I, myself have experienced some personal concern that if I were to return to the US and they searched the emails and text messages on my phone and in my computer they might just arrest me at the Airport and eventually send me to El Salvador along with some other dissenting Americans.

The civil rights and personal guarantees granted to American citizens by the US Constitution seem to be on their way to disappearing. Actually, it is the idea of America that seems to be fading away rather quickly.

It has often been said that America is just a concept whose essential tenets have been tested in a sociopolitical Democratic experiment over the past 250 years. That may well be true, but now it seems that the experiment is finally failing under the weight of its most deadly nemesis.

If and when it happens, the fall of the Democratic Republic of the United States won’t be at the hands of the Russians, the Chinese, the Europeans, or anybody else. It will be at the hands of the American people themselves.

May the Universal Forces save the United States of America from its own misguided people.

To read an article that narrates with explicit detail where this alarming situation stands today, please click here.

Salaroche.