Two German teens who planned to visit Hawaii in March as part of a months-long world adventure recently told a German newspaper that they were instead handcuffed, imprisoned and deported — an account making headlines worldwide and raising concerns about the impact on tourism if some international visitors are facing heightened risks at U.S. borders.
Charlotte Pohl, 19, and Maria Lepere, 18, told the major daily German newspaper Ostee-Zeitung in a story published April 10, 808ne.ws/OZ, that they were turned away because they were unable to present lodging confirmation for their entire stay in Hawaii, which was one of the stops on a world trip to celebrate graduating high school.
“They found it suspicious that we hadn’t fully booked our accommodations for the entire five weeks in Hawaii,” Pohl told the Ostsee-Zeitung. “We wanted to travel spontaneously, just like we had done in Thailand and New Zealand.”
But Customs and Border Protection Assistant Commissioner Hilton Beckham said in an emailed statement to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the teens were denied entry after attempting to enter the U.S. under false pretenses.
“One used a visitor visa, the other the visa waiver program,” Beckham said. “Both claimed they were touring California but later admitted they intended to work — something strictly prohibited under U.S. immigration laws for these visas.”
Lepere told the German online publication Stern.de, 808ne.ws/sternde, in an April 22 story that “some of the answers were truly falsified” in transcripts from their Hawaii ordeal.
For example, Lepere said she told officials that she wanted to visit the U.S. “to travel and visit my family in California.” But she said that “the final answer on the paper was, ‘Work for housing and extra spending money.’ It reads as if we wanted to work illegally in the U.S., which we never said because it was never our intention.”
The two teens told the Ostee-Zeitung that they spent a night in prison in Honolulu and then returned to their home in Rostock, Germany, via Tokyo, Qatar and Frankfurt three days after their arrest. They told Stern.de that officials booked them on a flight to Tokyo because they did not want to return to New Zealand, the country that they had visited before Hawaii.
Denis Salle, honorary German consul in Honolulu, provided this statement: “The Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in San Francisco is aware of the case and has been in contact with the relevant U.S. authorities. We kindly ask for your understanding that for reasons of privacy and data protection laws, we cannot provide further details on the case. Considering the procedures of the Customs and Border authorities, please refer to the relevant U.S. authorities.”
Customs and Border Protection did not respond to the Star-Advertiser’s query on how often visitors have been denied entry under similar circumstances in Hawaii and elsewhere and whether there have been any changes to the volume of visitors who are deported or to the policies around visitor deportations under the Trump administration.
Still, the Star-Advertiser is aware of at least one other international visitor who was detained and deported from Hawaii since the German teens, and there have been recent media reports of other states deporting international visitors. The New York Times reported about a recent flurry in late March of international visitors attempting to enter the United States from other countries who were denied entry at border checkpoints, leading to either deportations to their home countries or days or weeks of detention.
A 28-year-old British woman arrived in Britain the week of March 20 after she was held at an immigration detention center in Washington state for three weeks, according to The New York Times. She had attempted to enter the United States from Canada, and questions arose at the land-border crossing whether she had the correct visa.
Her ordeal came shortly after two German tourists in separate incidents were deported after trying to enter the United States from Mexico. The Times said both had spent weeks in a detention center in San Diego, and both said they were unclear as to why they had been detained and deported.
International tourism
The stories from international visitors refused entry are sparking concerns about what travelers can expect at U.S. border crossings, which could further weaken international visitor demand.
International arrivals to Hawaii are still far below the 2019 pre-COVID-19 level, and recovery already was sluggish even before the Trump administration’s tariffs, stricter border policies and geopolitical issues like talk of turning Canada and Greenland into states, or the administration’s stance on NATO and the war between Russia and the Ukraine.
In 2024 about 1.66 million visitors came to Hawaii on international flights, according to data from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. International arrivals were up 6.8% from 2024 but down more than 45% from the 2o19 pre-pandemic level.
Jerry Gibson, president of the Hawai‘i Hotel Alliance, said Canadian travel to Hawaii already is only about half of what it was in 2019 and that travel from Japan to Hawaii still hasn’t rallied despite a more favorable yen-to-dollar exchange rate.
“Next year from Japan I think we’ll see 4% or 5% improvement, not the 10% to 15% that some people are talking about,” Gibson said. “Obviously, (European travelers) aren’t thrilled with us, so intuitively, you would think that we would get less, but we haven’t been able to prove that yet because we don’t get a lot of them.”
In January and February, DBEDT reported that only 289,719 visitors came to Hawaii on international flights, down 6.6% from the start of 2024; and in February only 133,960 visitors came to Hawaii on international flights, a 13% drop from February 2024.
Gibson said, “I really hope that nothing like (the deportation of the German teens) sets any kind of precedent. We are viewed as a very friendly state, and I hope that we can keep that feeling throughout the world.”
But on Friday, posters on the Kauai, Hawaii Facebook site brought up the story of the German teens as a cautionary tale when responding to two 22-year-old New Zealanders who said they “were looking to work on Kauai in exchange for food and accommodation in June and possibly July as a way to explore and immerse ourselves in the Hawaiian culture.”
One poster said, “Don’t tell the immigration folks or you may find yourself sent back before you see a beach.”
Mufi Hannemann, president and CEO for the Hawai‘i Lodging and Tourism Association and a board member of the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, said, “Any negative publicity about policies and procedures, whether it’s on the federal or state level, is not good.”
Hannemann, who represents HLTA on the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, said the group was reappointed under the Trump administration and is awaiting its first meeting. The board is the advisory body to the U.S. Commerce Department on issues and concerns affecting the nation’s travel and tourism industry.
“I’m sure that this will be a part of it because we are always talking about issues dealing with entry into our country, dealing with homeland security and Department of State,” he said. “That’s a priority, especially as we are gearing up for what’s going to happen in Los Angeles in a few years, whether it’s the Olympics or the World Cup.”
Gibson said he hopes there will be some official attempt to find alternative accommodations for travelers who are not criminals and have simply made mistakes at the border.
“We want to treat everyone with respect and aloha. It’s tough to hear that (the German teens) had to stay in detention, and we wish that there was another way that we could have done it,” he said.
Border controls
Even before the incident with the German teens in Hawaii, the Trump administration’s stringent border policies were garnering worldwide attention.
It was just April 4, during a news conference in Brussels, that a journalist asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio what message that he would give to “foreign citizens who may be afraid to come to the United States because they’re concerned about potentially being detained over some minor administrative error or because they might have something on their phone — like criticism of the president or of the Israel-Gaza conflict.”
Rubio said, “I would say that if you’re not coming to the United States to join a Hamas protest or to come here and tell us about how right Hamas is or to tell us about — stir up conflict on our campuses and create riots in our street and vandalize our universities, then you have nothing to worry about.”
But the German teens arrived in Honolulu on March 18, and a day later Reuters reported that Germany’s foreign ministry updated its travel advice website for the U.S. to clarify that neither approval through the U.S. ESTA system nor a U.S. visa entitles entry in every case.
Germany’s foreign ministry told Reuters that the update did not constitute a travel warning but said it was monitoring whether there had been a change in U.S. immigration policy after three nationals had been detained by the U.S.
The three nationals referred to by the German foreign ministry did not try to enter Hawaii and did not include Pohl and Lepere, who alleged that the consequences for their seemingly minor entry oversight was severe.
Pohl told the Ostsee-Zeitung,”We were searched with metal detectors, our entire bodies were scanned and we had to stand naked in front of the police officers and were looked through. Then we were given green prison clothes and put in a prison cell with serious criminals.”
Lepere also told the Ostsee-Zeitung that the experience “was all like a fever dream. We had already noticed a little bit of what was going on in the U.S. But at the time we didn’t think it was happening to Germans. That was perhaps very naive. We felt so small and powerless.”
Jeff Joseph, an immigration lawyer in Denver, told The New York Times that those entering the United States with an ESTA are not allowed to study or work a permanent job. In this process, visitors “waive” a lot of rights, including the right to contest deportation. Because of that, people using this program can be subject to mandatory detention.
U.S. federal law gives government agents the right to search people’s property, including their phones and laptops, at border entry points. They do not need to be suspected of wrongdoing in order to be searched, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
