Australian comedian Alice Fraser has cancelled a planned US tour over fears about past Donald Trump jokes. Alice was due to jet off to New York in May to promote her recently published book, A Passion for Passion: A Delirious Love Letter to Romance. However, the comedian revealed to The Guardian she rethought her plans after receiving advice from an immigration lawyer.

She said what she thought was a ‘paranoid’ question, was not deemed so by her lawyer following claims of people being denied entry to the US and travellers to the country detained. ‘I asked [the lawyer] what I thought was a ridiculous question – that I do political satire and have a fair few jokes floating around on Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and asked whether that would be a risk’ Alice told the publication. Alice, who planned to apply for a O-1B visa, added her lawyer advised she could be subject to increased scrutiny from US immigration officials. ‘I thought I was being paranoid, but she said it might [pose a risk] and they’d almost certainly Google me,’ she said.

‘My lawyer said while the vast majority of people will be able to travel in and out … they’re definitely doing increased scrutinising.’ The comedian added if it had not been for her children, she may have been willing to take the risk. ‘If I didn’t have two children, I might be more open to taking a risk, but the vision of me being there with a baby strapped to me and held up and hassled, or worse … I’m not up for that.’

No stranger to political-tinged comedy, Alice has also been contributor to podcasts such as The Bugle and The Last Post as well as BBC Radio’s The News Quiz. Speaking about the US President in 2020, Alice revealed: ‘I’m fine with writing a Trump joke once a week, I just don’t want to have to write one every day. ‘I once wrote: “I wouldn’t take an IOU from Trump if he wrote it on the money he owed me”. It was nice, once. But what do you do next?’

Alice also appeared at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this week as part of the political podcast A Rational Fear, in what was billed as the ‘how toy evade deportation’ special. Alice said she is still open to visiting the US, but only when jokes about the US President and Elon Musk are not ‘considered hostile to the nation’. It comes as reports have emerged tourists to the US – some of whom claim to have held valid visas – say they were shackled and jailed for weeks, before being taken to the airport in ‘leg chains, waist chains and handcuffs’ for deportation and allowed to fly home at their own expense.

Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney was denied entry into the country while trying to make her way from Mexico to San Diego, California after her work visa was revoked back in November while travelling from Vancouver to Los Angeles. She was hurled into jail on March 3 and spent 12 days in detention, claiming it felt like she had been ‘kidnapped’ and trapped in an experiment. She told ABC10 ‘what is happening is so unjust and I know that there’s a better way to do this’.

Lucas Sielaff, 25, was driving into the US from Mexico with his American fianceé when he claims Border Patrol agents accused of him violating the rules of his 90-day US tourist permit. Sielaff, who alleges he held a valid visa and had visited the US several times before, was handcuffed, shackled and sent to a crowded immigration detention centre where he spent 16 days locked up before being allowed to fly home to Germany. ‘I still have nightmares and I’m not yet back to normal,’ Sielaff told the Financial Times of the horrific experience.

‘I’m trying to process everything properly. It’ll take a while.’ Becky Burke, a Welsh backpacker travelling across North America, was stopped at the US-Canada border on February 26 and held for nearly three weeks at a detention facility in Washington state , her father Paul Burke posted on Facebook. Her father said she was accused of travelling on the wrong visa. After being held in custody for 19 days she was allegedly transported to the airport ‘in leg chains, waist chains and handcuffs’.

The tourists said it was never made clear why they were taken into custody, even after they offered to go home voluntarily. The incidents are fuelling anxiety amongst travellers as the Trump Administration’s illegal migrant crackdown sees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents take a ‘more aggressive enforcement’ approach at the border. The Administration had planned to issue a so-called travel ban that barred entry to foreign nationals from 43 countries who allegedly do not meet America’s vetting standards, but the proposal has been indefinitely delayed.

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