Traveling to Trumpland

Henry Rousso, French Jewish Holocaust era Historian was detained by US immigration officials in Houston’s George Busch International Airport this past Wednesday for more than 10 hours.
Rousso, one of France’s preeminent scholars and public intellectuals, was en route from Paris to lecture at an academic symposium at at Texas A&M University’s Hagler Institute for Advanced Study.

The Egyptian-born French citizen, who authored “The Vichy Syndrome”, was deemed an illegal alien, and awaited deportation to France when the university received notice and intervened.

The incident was blamed on an inexperienced customs officer, but other than the fact that someone successfully intervened on Rousso’s behalf, his experience is not unique. It is not unusual for a foreign passport holder to be detained by customs for hours, and it only takes one overzealous U.S. Customs officer to result in a visitor’s removal from the country.

Perhaps the confusion stems from the vagaries…