The Daily Mail (UK) reports:
Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe’.
Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.
The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?’ …
Leigh was also quizzed about another tweet which quoted hit US comedy Family Guy which read: ‘3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up![‘]
A New York Times blog post suggests the story is indeed correct, and quotes a Customs and Border Protection response that seems to acknowledge at least some details.
If the facts described in these stories are correct, this strikes me as a pretty unsound decision on the government’s part. To be sure, the government has broad authority to exclude people from the country, even based on their speech — see Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972) — and the authority would be properly exercised for people who really do seem to be threats. But I don’t see the reported Twitter messages as being an adequate basis (again, if they were the extent of the basis) to justify the government’s decisions here. Likewise, while I realize that when someone is excluded from the country they have to be held somewhere until they can leave, locking them up with people who likely genuinely are serious criminals strikes me as improper treatment.
UPDATE: I erroneously faulted TSA for the actions here — the agency involved was Customs and Border Protection, which is also part of the Department of Homeland Security. My apologies for the error, and thanks to commenter Decius for the correction.