Potential Travel Ban

To: Human Resources

Date: March 18, 2025

Re: International Travel Warning

It has come to our attention through various professional bar associations and news outlets that multiple foreign national travelers with validly issued non-immigrant visas (H-1B, L-1, O-1, TN, J-1, etc.) or currently holding lawful permanent residency (green card) in the United States have been detained, questioned and/or refused admission to the United States by US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) after brief international travel.  Moreover, we expect very soon to see potential changes in travel restrictions and travel bans, visa procedures and processing, re-entry requirements, and other travel-related delays that will affect a foreign nationals ability to return to the United States as planned.

Therefore, in order to prevent your employees, students or interns from being detained or denied admission to the United States, we are suggesting that you review the following steps immediately:

1. Advise all employees, students or interns who are currently with your organization pursuant to any non-immigrant visa classification, lawful permanent resident status, or other authorized employment status which also allows foreign travel (such as TPS, Deferred Action, Humanitarian Parole, etc.) to refrain from international travel for the foreseeable future unless urgent and unavoidable (IE restricted to death in a family or absolute business necessity).
2. Should travel be urgent or an absolute business necessity that cannot be avoided, we advise that the international traveler and company be aware of the following and the employee take affirmative steps before leaving the United States to address each of these points if possible:
   • Complete a review of all their immigration-related paperwork, including non-immigrant applications filed with US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) to determine that the information is complete and accurate as of the date of travel.
     • If there are any inaccuracies or changes in the information contained on that immigration paperwork, the employee should notify Human Resources and our team as to the issues so that they can be reviewed and any necessary corrective action taken.
     • Employee should be reminded that any prior criminal record (both in the United States and abroad and whether previously disclosed to USCIS, CBP or the Department of State or not), texts, emails, online activity, social media visits, etc. may be used against the employee as a reason to deny admission. Any of the above, known to the employee, should be reviewed with their own legal counsel or our team prior to travel.
   • Human Resources must work with our team to prepare a travel letter for the employee, student or intern that details their current position in detail, salary, immigration classification, dates of travel and that the employer has the position available to the employee upon their return.
   • Human Resources should provide at least 4 recent pay records for the employee, student or intern which support the information provided in section (b) above.
   • The employee should be certain that their passport is valid for at least six months beyond the end of their intended stay in the United States and that their non-immigrant visa stamp (if already issued) is valid for the entire length of their trip abroad.
   • Employee should be made aware that all electronic devices including, but not limited to laptop computers, smart phones, USB flash drives, cameras, as well as any additional electronic devices are subject to search and seizure without warning by CBP upon arrival in the United States or at any CBP Pre-Inspection Station prior to boarding the airplane. These searches include all aspects of the device including text messages, emails, current files and deleted files that are still present on the device. CBP can and will ask the employee for passwords to access these devices and in some cases the devices are kept for forensic inspection beyond the admission encounter whether the employee is admitted to the United States or not. There should be no expectation of privacy by the company or the employee. Failure to provide these passwords will likely result in the employee being barred from entry and returned on the next flight abroad.
   • Finally, employer and employee should make contingency plans in the event that the employee is barred from returning to the United States. Just because an employee has an approved nonimmigrant visa stamp, advance parole, lawful permanent residency card (green card) or other approved USCIS or Department of  State issued document, means that the employee is guaranteed to be readmitted to the United States. Moreover, having a USCIS issued approval notice for a non-immigrant visa classification does not mean that the Department of State will issue the visa stamp requested at a US Consulate abroad in a certain timeframe or at all. Employer and employee should create a contingency plan if the employee, student or intern is refused admission to the United States such as remote work, another employee to take over the work, etc.

Since there now appear to be multiple reports of lawful non-immigrants and immigrants being refused admission to the United States, we felt it was prudent to alert our clients to potential changes and/or disruptors in the immediate future to your business and workforce. Please address any questions and comments to this memo to matthew@maionaward.com. Thank you.