Rodeo picture at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. Photo courtesy of Maria Martha Bruno.

This article, written by Maria Martha Bruno, was originally published in Agência Pública's newsletter on April 29, 2025. An edited version is published here under a partnership agreement with Global Voices.  

“Why are you wearing sunglasses? Why are you traveling alone? What were you doing in Colombia? What's your job? What brings you to the United States? Are you carrying drugs?”

These were the questions posed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent as I collected my luggage from the conveyor belt at Houston Airport on March 16, 2025. I was returning to Texas, where I had lived for two years, completing a master’s degree at Texas A&M University and teaching until December of the previous year. This time, I was representing Agência Pública at the International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ).

My return could not have been a more textbook example of how the current US administration treats certain travelers. I'm a non-white woman — in the US, even though Brazilians such as myself are not officially categorized as Latino, we are often perceived as Latin Americans — traveling alone, and I was arriving from Colombia. Moreover, I'm a journalist.

On that Sunday in March, I told the ICE agent I was wearing the sunglasses because I had a prescription. I also explained I was traveling solo due to a work assignment in Colombia and that I was a journalist attending a media conference in the US And no, I wasn’t carrying drugs — just four bags of coffee in my suitcase, gifts for the friends who would host me in Texas, along with clothes and personal items.

The agent said he didn’t believe me. Cautiously and respectfully, I asked, “Was this stop random, or did something about me stand out?” Big mistake.

The burly white man with a thick beard and shaved head raised his voice, seemingly offended by the question. “I think you’re lying, and I do think you’re carrying drugs. I have no reason to believe you or anyone. My only purpose is to put America’s interests first.”

Yes, he repeated Donald Trump’s slogan word for word: “America first.” It may sound cartoonish, but it’s intimidating — and it works.

He then walked me to a private inspection area. It was a short walk, but I was nervous — after all, I'm a woman, a journalist, and I was alone in a foreign land.

The screening room held a family with two children and another solo female traveler. I handed over my suitcase keys so he could rummage through my belongings. He did not open the coffee packages, though.

Later, a US friend told me his assessment of the situation: “That was a performance to threaten you. If he really suspected anything, he would have opened the coffee packs.”

Tension only eased when I mentioned Texas A&M. That local detail shifted the tone. A second officer, more polite, began chatting about the university. I quickly pivoted the conversation to Texas barbecue and college football. They returned my passport, and I was released.

I’m not someone who cries easily, but when I walked out of that room, I broke down for three hours. I cried over politics and over personal fears. I thought about my former students at Texas A&M, the ICE agent’s face, and the family who had been screened beside me. Had they been released, or subjected to further humiliation? I cried because I knew I had been intimidated and targeted for my gender, my job, and my nationality.

In 2024, I gave some leniency to my students who voted for Trump — after all, they said it was about grocery prices, right? But that day, I also cried because even those who weren’t hardcore supporters had taken the whole package: as they voted for the economy, they also accepted brutality and every form of prejudice.

On Friday, April 18, about a month after the incident, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a series of recommendations addressing this type of treatment at US entry points. The organization, which advocates for press freedom, highlights risks like electronic device searches and prolonged questioning, like mine. It also published a checklist with digital security tips and the advice to carry emergency contacts on a piece of paper.

What’s happening in the US already happened in Texas

Texas — a well-known, wealthy conservative stronghold — has long been a testing ground for anti-immigrant and anti-DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) policies. Operation Lone Star, launched in 2021, has spent USD 10 billion patrolling the border with Mexico, detaining over half a million immigrants, and even infiltrating WhatsApp groups with military personnel to spy on migrants.

While Trump announced in February 2025 the end of DEI-based admissions, hiring, and project funding nationwide, Texas had already passed similar legislation in April 2023.

Last year, Texas A&M Health Center suspended hormone treatments for trans students, under pressure from conservative alumni, as revealed in emails leaked to the university’s student newspaper. Even before Trump returned to office early this year, conservative influencer Christopher Rufo, of the right-wing Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, accused the university of “racial segregation” after a business professor promoted a conference for Black, Latino, and Indigenous participants only.

Therefore, Texas, in many ways, foreshadowed national shifts. “We’re concerned, but not surprised. What’s happening across the US already happened here,” one of my former professors at A&M told me.

A&M is the largest public university in the United States by student enrollment (with over 70,000 students) and holds the eighth-largest endowment among American universities. It is a STEM-focused conservative institution and a NASA partner, but its liberal arts college has remained a space where it was still possible to work with political minorities. However, a colleague conducting research with the queer community told me he fears losing funding before completing his doctoral dissertation.

We had that conversation on campus, as I used the visit to Texas to also see some friends and former professors. It was a chilly day, and we sat on a sunny bench outside the library where I was working. As he told me how cautious he was about discussing politics on social media and at work, he lowered his voice. I found myself mirroring him, thinking that if a gay US citizen, seasoned by life in Texas, was guarded, maybe I should be too.

Another professor in the Department of Journalism and Communication told me he hadn’t changed his course material — just the language: “I still teach the same things, just using different words.” In his class, he avoids Trump’s taboo terms — diversity, equity, inclusion — but conveys the same ideas using words like multiplicity, variety, and acceptance. He also mentioned that foreign faculty, especially those from China, are afraid to leave the US for holidays, fearing they won’t be let back in.

Whether through ICE agents parroting MAGA slogans, deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador, or the purge of DEI values from education, during his 100 days in office, Trump is definitely delivering his promises, through tone, action, and messaging.