The Strange Case of the French Scientist Denied Entry to the United States

The New York Times ran a story this week with sensational headline: “U.S. Turned Away French Scientist Over Views on Trump Policies, France Says”. The gist of the article is that the administration has somehow convinced CBP line agents to punish the president’s foreign critics, including those who are purely academics concerned about the state of science in the Second Age of Trump.

The problem is the story is likely not true.

Inspection at the Border

I have written extensively in the past about the “inspection protocol”, the rules that CBP officers in the agency’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) must follow when determining whether to admit aliens at the ports of entry, whether on land or sea or at airports.

The inspection protocol is set forth in section 235 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), and here’s how it goes, in brief.

A foreign national either applies for a visa at a consulate abroad and receives that visa, or is a national of one of the 43 “visa waiver” countries who don’t need visas to come for tourism or business and has completed the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) form prior to arrival, or simply skips the process entirely and show up without a visa.

Note that common carriers (airlines, cruise lines, etc.) are on the hook to provide return transit for foreign travelers denied admission, so they usually inspect passengers’ passports and visas to ensure they are admissible. That said, some of those passengers use fraudulent documents to board that are only detected upon arrival.

Not much is known about the “French scientist” in question, but he apparently either arrived as a visa waiver applicant or he had some sort of visa.

In any event, once those aliens arrive at ports of entry, CBP officers ask them questions and check a series of databases to ensure they can be admitted. The whole process is quick, generally only taking a minute or two.

If there are any questions about the admissibility of the “applicant for admission”, however, the CBP officer will refer the alien to “secondary inspection”, where different CBP officers can delve more deeply into the case.

During the secondary inspection process, OFO will question the alien and may examine the traveler’s luggage and personal belongings, including any electronics that the passenger may have. No alien has a right to be admitted, and the ports of entry are considered the “threshold” of the United States at which aliens have few constitutional rights.

Most importantly for purposes of this case, as CBP explains to those seeking entry at the ports:

Travelers are obligated to present electronic devices and the information resident on the device in a condition that allows for the examination of the device and its contents. Failure to assist CBP in accessing the electronic device and its contents for examination may result in the detention of the device in order to complete the inspection.

Aliens denied admission may simply request that their applications be withdrawn so that they can return without consequence, but that is a privilege that CBP can refuse.

Moreover, as the pertinent regulation states: “Permission to withdraw an application for admission should not normally be granted unless the alien intends and is able to depart the United States immediately.”

If the alien has presented fraudulent documents or lacks proper admission documents, OFO can subject the alien to expedited removal and (absent an asylum claim and a finding that the alien has a “credible fear” of return) simply expel the alien.

Aliens inadmissible on other grounds will be placed into removal proceedings before immigration judges to determine whether they are admissible and (alternatively) eligible for any “relief” from removal — generally asylum or a waiver of inadmissibility.

Aliens who seek admission under the visa waiver program (VWP), however, waive their rights to removal hearings but if they assert a fear of harm if returned, they too can be referred to the immigration court to seek asylum in what are known as “asylum-only” proceedings.

“Values We Will Continue to Proudly Uphold”

Which brings me to the Times’s article, which begins: “A French scientist was prevented from entering the United States this month because of an opinion he expressed about the Trump administration’s policies on academic research, according to the French government.”

Such an intro is likely catnip for Donald Trump’s enemies, both foreign and domestic, because it neatly encapsulates the claims they most commonly hurl against the president: that he is thin-skinned, has authoritarian instincts, dislikes aliens, and is a science denier.

The scientist in question, who to the best of my knowledge has not yet been named, is described by the Times as an “academic ... working for France’s publicly funded National Center for Scientific Research”, who was headed to a conference in the Houston area when he was stopped at the airport.

Which leads me to statements quoted in that article from Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister for higher education and research. He described the denial of admission to this “academic” as “worrying”.

According to Baptiste:

Freedom of opinion, free research and academic freedom are values we will continue to proudly uphold ... I will defend the possibility for all French researchers to be faithful to them, in compliance with the law, wherever they may be in the world.

Good for him, and as an American steeped in the writings of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot, I am right there with him — and trust Jefferson and Franklin would have been, too.

The problem with such incidents is that DHS — including CBP — generally extends privacy rights to most of the people it deals with, including aliens denied admission. Consequently, the facts as presented in the press are usually one-sided and solely from the perspective of the aliens.

Fortunately (or not as will soon become obvious), the Times continued:

The U.S. authorities denied entry to the scientist and then deported him because his phone contained message exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed his “personal opinion” on the Trump administration’s science policies, Mr. Baptiste said.

Plainly, a French minister and the representative of an ally that has stood shoulder-to-shoulder by the United States in wars dating back to our nation’s birth could be trusted to have researched the matter and therefore be providing the real facts, and not simply his national’s side of it — right?

Maybe not.

The McLaughlin Tweet

Likely irritated (if not burned) by the one-sided stories about this case, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin took to X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday night to pull back the curtain on the incident:

Wait — Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)? Isn’t that where they made the atomic bomb?

Yes, and apparently, they are still in the nuclear game. As the agency explains on its website:

LANL's main responsibility is to ensure our nation's security through nuclear deterrence — this includes stewardship of our nation's nuclear weapons to assure our allies and deter our adversaries. The Laboratory applies the best scientific and engineering solutions to our national security mission and to many of the world's most difficult challenges.

Note that there is no reference on any of LANL’s official channels that its scientists are also tasked with producing supercharged “personal opinions on the Trump administration’s science policies”. Given that, OFO may have had good reason to deny this guy’s admission.

“Nothing to Do With Trump”

The Times followed up its initial reporting on the case on Friday, in an article headlined “U.S. Says Decision to Turn Back French Scientist Had Nothing to Do With Trump”.

It includes the facts as set forth in the McLaughlin tweet, as well as a statement from France’s National Center for Scientific Research, where the academic in question works, stating that he doesn’t wish to talk to the media.

Baptiste’s office, according to the Times, has also failed to respond to McLaughlin’s statements. That said, as per the Times, “on Friday, Mr. Baptiste repeated his claim that the scientist had been targeted because of private discussions and opinions about the Trump administration’s policies”.

Apparently, Baptiste hasn’t spoken to the scientist, but his office has. Maybe he and his office should parley with the U.S. embassy, too.

Press outlets may soon realize that when one-sided tales critical of the president’s immigration policies sound too good to be true, they often really aren’t true. Whether that stops them from running them is a different story. It’s a free country, after all.