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British-born CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour revealed on her podcast “The Ex Files” on Wednesday that she recently prepared to travel to the U.S. as if she were traveling to North Korea.
Speaking with her ex-husband Jamie Rubin, a former State Department official, Amanpour recalled a speech she gave at Harvard Kennedy School last month. Although she was a prominent media figure, she expressed fear that she would be stopped by border security.
“I must say I was afraid,” Amanpour said. “I’m a foreigner. I don’t have a green card. I’m not an American citizen. I’m fairly prominent, and I literally prepared to go to America as if I was going to North Korea. I took a burner phone. Imagine that. I didn’t take a single…not my mobile phone, not my iPad, nothing, and I had nothing on the burner phone except a few numbers.”
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Christiane Amanpour described how she felt afraid to travel to give a speech in the U.S. (Mike Marsland/Getty Images for SeriousFun)
She added that she spoke to CNN security before her visit after hearing several anecdotes about her fellow British citizens being either detained for hours or turned around at the border. However, she found that she was welcomed into the country and that the immigration officer she met “could not have been nicer.”
“So, huge sigh of relief I breathed, but wow, can you imagine if I’m afraid, what do others think?” Amanpour said.
Rubin argued that President Donald Trump’s attempts to bar Harvard from accepting foreign students were only the latest attacks he’s made against the country itself.
“With Donald Trump’s basically weaponization of the immigration and naturalization service to scrutinize people, to imagine that every single non-American is a threat to the United States, is a war on what our country has been since its founding,” Rubin said.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday blocking travel from several countries out of security concerns. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The podcast episode premiered hours before the Trump administration announced an executive order blocking travel to the U.S. from nearly 20 countries identified as “very high-risk” for terrorism, high visa overstay rates and other security concerns.
