A Norwegian tourist has become the latest traveller to be denied entry to the US after handing over his phone to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials. The reason? According to him, it boiled down to one cheeky meme of US Vice President JD Vance on his device.
Speaking to Norwegian newspaper Nordlys earlier this week, 21-year-old Mads Mikkelsen (who happens to share a name with the Hannibal actor) claimed he was turned away after landing at New Jersey’s Newark Airport on June 11.
He told the outlet he was questioned about “drug trafficking, terrorist plots, and right-wing extremism” before being put in a holding cell.
Mikkelsen said that, after being warned he could face a fine of US$5,000 or even prison, he gave immigration officials the PIN code to his phone, where they found the meme.
Another photo seen by ICE officials, according to Mikkelsen, was a wooden pipe he’d made himself a few years ago.
Mikkelsen claimed he tried to tell agents the photos were just a joke, and had automatically saved on his camera roll from a chat, but they instead searched him, took his fingerprints, and forced him to give blood samples.
He said he was put on a flight right back to Norway that same day.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have since addressed media reports around Mikkelsen’s experience.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday (local time), the CBP stated he was not denied entry “for any memes or political reasons”, rather they said it was “for his admitted drug use”. (Side-note: not US authorities having to re-share the JD Vance meme in their statement??)
Speaking to Nordlys after the CBP’s statement, Mikkelsen said he had been questioned at the airport about illegal drug use, and admitted to having used cannabis on two occasions.
“It’s legal in both places, so in my mind it was irrelevant,” he told the outlet on Wednesday, explaining he hadn’t gotten the impression that the drug-related questions were a major issue for authorities at the time.
He added that he’s since received the decision of being denied entry into the US in writing, which has left him pretty gobsmacked.
According to Mikkelsen, the document states he is an immigrant and holds a Spanish passport.
“But I’m Norwegian and have never been to Spain,” he told Nordlys.
He also denies the document’s claim that he was carrying an actual pipe, or that he was planning to visit family in the US. (He had planned to visit friends, with his mother joining him later).
“It’s easy to contradict what the US is saying. I don’t have Spanish family, and I have no connection to that country,” Mikkelsen said.
The truly wild saga comes weeks after an Australian traveller shared his own tale of being denied entry into the US after being questioned about his views on the war in Gaza, as well as articles he’d written about pro-Palestine university protests on his personal blog.
Amid a stopover in LA, on his trip to New York earlier this month, Alistair Kitchen said he was pulled from the line at customs and taken to a backroom, where border agents seized his phone.
He said one border agent remarked “we both know why you’re here, it’s because of what you wrote online”.
Kitchen, who was a student at Columbia University last year, had written about the pro-Palestinian rallies on campus on his personal blog prior to moving back to Australia.
“The officer that detained me said explicitly to me, ‘The reason we have detained you is because of what you have written on the internet about the protests at Columbia’,” Kitchen told ABC News.
In an Instagram post, Kitchen further clarified he had “cleaned up” his online presence prior to the trip, expecting some digital sweeps, although he hadn’t expected the sophistication of the search.
“In retrospect I should have denied search and accepted immediate deportation. In general I was too compliant, too trusting, too hopeful,” he wrote.
Lead image: Nordys
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