Tourist claims he was barred from entry to US after JD Vance meme was found on his phone
A holidaymaker from Norway has claimed ICE guards turned him away from the US border because of a meme he’d saved of JD Vance with no hair.
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21-year-old Mads Mikkelsen has claimed ICE agents at the US border “threatened” and “harassed” him as he arrived in the country on June 11.
After landing at Newark airport in New Jersey, 21-year-old Mads Mikkelsen said ICE agents pulled him aside and detained him in a cell.
Mr Mikkelsen claims the agents threatened him with a $5,000 fine or five years in prison if he did not hand over the password to his phone.
Speaking to Norwegian outlet Nordlys, he said the ICE agents subjected him to an “abuse of power”.
Read More: New US visa rules will demand access to foreign students’ social media accounts
The agents reportedly asked Mr Mikkelsen about drug trafficking, terrorist plots and right-wing extremism.
After allegedly taking his phone and forcibly unlocking it, Mikkelsen says the agents then found an edit of JD Vance with no hair.
Edited photos of JD Vance took social media by storm in February, after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was invited to the White House.
The shared press conference between Zelenskyy, Trump and Vance ended in a spectacular fight, and memes of the incident flooded social media.
One of the memes took aim at Vance, who was mocked for telling Zelenskyy, “he didn’t even say thank you”.
In response, social media was flooded with highly edited, nonsensical photos of JD Vance’s face.
Mr Mikkelsen claims that saving one of these photos was the reason they sent him home “the same day”.
The news comes amid plans announced this month by the US government to only permit students’ visas if they unlocked their social media profiles for vetting.
It’s understood that Mr Mikkelsen was not a student, and was visiting the US on a tourist visa.
However, the announcement came amid a surveillance push by the US State Department to increase surveillance of “hostile” visa applications.
The Trump administration has also enacted another travel ban - similar to the one instituted in his first term, but broader and not just targeted at muslim-majority countries.
Neither travel ban included tourists from Norway, but the move does signify a desire for greater control over entrants to the US.