other country

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Trump declined to say Friday whether he plans to resume underground nuclear detonation tests, as he had seemed to suggest in a social media post this week that raised concerns the U.S. would begin testing nuclear weapons for the first time in three decades.

The president told reporters “You’ll find out very soon,” without elaborating when asked if he means to resume underground nuclear detonation tests.

Trump, who spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One as he headed to Florida for a weekend stay, said, “We’re going to do some testing” and “Other countries do it. If they’re going to do it, we’re going to” but then refused to offer more details.

His comments on nuclear testing have drawn confusion inside and outside the government when the president seemed to suggest in a brief post that the U.S. would resume nuclear warhead tests on an “equal basis” with Russia and China, whose last known tests were in the 1990s. Some of Trump’s comments seemed to refer to testing missiles that would deliver a warhead, rather than the warhead itself. There has been no indication that the U.S. would start detonating warheads.

The U.S. military already regularly tests its missiles that are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, but it has not detonated the weapons since 1992. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the U.S. signed but did not ratify, has been observed since its adoption by all countries possessing nuclear weapons, North Korea being the only exception.

The Pentagon has not responded to questions. The Energy Department, which oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile, declined to comment Friday.

Trump’s post on nuclear tests came as Russia this week announced it had tested a new atomic-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone and a new nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Russia responded to Trump’s post by underscoring that it did not test its nuclear weapons and has abided by a global ban on nuclear testing. The Kremlin warned though, that if the U.S. resumes testing its weapons, Russia will as well — an intensification that would restart Cold War-era tensions.

Vice Adm. Richard Correll, Trump’s nominee to lead the military command in charge of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, struggled to interpret the president’s comments when he testified before senators during a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday, telling them, “I’m not reading anything into it or reading anything out of it.”

Price and Ceneta write for the Associated Press. Price reported from Washington.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump’s comments Thursday suggesting the United States will restart its testing of nuclear weapons upends decades of American policy in regards to the bomb, but come as Washington’s rivals have been expanding and testing their nuclear-capable arsenals.

Nuclear weapons policy, once thought to be a relic of the Cold War, increasingly has come to the fore as Russia has made repeated atomic threats to both the U.S. and Europe during its war on Ukraine. Moscow also acknowledged this week testing a nuclear-powered-and-capable cruise missile called the Burevestnik, code-named Skyfall by NATO, and a nuclear-armed underwater drone.

China is building more ground-based nuclear missile silos. Meanwhile, North Korea just unveiled a new intercontinental ballistic missile it plans to test, part of a nuclear-capable arsenal likely able to reach the continental U.S.

The threat is starting to bleed into popular culture as well, most recently with director Kathryn Bigelow ‘s new film “A House of Dynamite.”

But what does Trump’s announcement mean and how would it affect what’s happening now with nuclear tensions? Here’s what to know.

Trump’s comments came in a post on his Truth Social website just before meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In it, Trump noted other countries testing weapons and wrote: “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”

The president’s post raised immediate questions. America’s nuclear arsenal is maintained by the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency within it — not the Defense Department. The Energy Department has overseen testing of nuclear weapons since its creation in 1977. Two other agencies before it — not the Defense Department — conducted tests.

Trump also claimed the U.S. “has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country.” Russia is believed to have 5,580 nuclear warheads, according to the Washington-based Arms Control Association, while the U.S. has 5,225. Those figures include so-called “retired” warheads waiting to be dismantled.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute further breaks the warhead total down, with the U.S. having 1,770 deployed warheads with 1,930 in reserve. Russia has 1,718 deployed warheads and 2,591 in reserve.

The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s atomic warheads.

U.S. last carried out a nuclear test in 1992

From the time America conducted its “Trinity” nuclear bomb detonation in 1945 to 1992, the U.S. detonated 1,030 atomic bombs in tests — the most of any country. Those figures do not include the two nuclear weapons America used against Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

The first American tests were atmospheric, but they were then moved underground to limit nuclear fallout. Scientists have come to refer to such tests as “shots.” The last such “shot,” called Divider as part of Operation Julin, took place Sept. 23, 1992, at the Nevada National Security Sites, a sprawling compound some 65 miles from Las Vegas.

America halted its tests for a couple of reasons. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. The U.S. also signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in 1996. There have been tests since the treaty, however — by India, North Korea and Pakistan, the world’s newest nuclear powers. The United Kingdom and France also have nuclear weapons, while Israel long has been suspected of possessing atomic bombs.

But broadly speaking, the U.S. also had decades of data from tests, allowing it to use computer modeling and other techniques to determine whether a weapon would successfully detonate. Every president since Barack Obama has backed plans to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal, whose maintenance and upgrading will cost nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The U.S. relies on the so-called “nuclear triad” — ground-based silos, aircraft-carried bombs and nuclear-tipped missiles in submarines at sea — to deter others from launching their weapons against America.

Restarting testing raises additional questions

If the U.S. restarted nuclear weapons testing, it isn’t immediately clear what the goal would be. Nonproliferation experts have warned any scientific objective likely would be eclipsed by the backlash to a test — and possibly be a starting gun for other major nuclear powers to begin their own widespread testing.

“Restarting the U.S. nuclear testing program could be one of the most consequential policy actions the Trump administration undertakes — a U.S. test could set off an uncontrolled chain of events, with other countries possibly responding with their own nuclear tests, destabilizing global security, and accelerating a new arms race,” experts warned in a February article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

“The goal of conducting a fast-tracked nuclear test can only be political, not scientific. … It would give Russia, China and other nuclear powers free rein to restart their own nuclear testing programs, essentially without political and economic fallout.”

Any future U.S. test likely would take place in Nevada at the testing sites, but a lot of work likely would need to go into the sites to prepare them given it’s been over 30 years since the last test. A series of slides made for a presentation at Los Alamos National Laboratories in 2018 laid out the challenges, noting that in the 1960s the city of Mercury, Nevada — at the testing grounds — had been the second-largest city in Nevada.

On average, 20,000 people had been on site to organize and prepare for the tests. That capacity has waned in the decades since.

“One effects shot would require from two to four years to plan and execute,” the presentation reads. “These were massive undertakings.”

Gambrell writes for the Associated Press.

President Trump signed a proclamation that imposes a $100,000 fee on H-1B visa applications, the immigration allocation set aside for highly skilled workers the U.S. economy needs. The new rules threaten the availability and deployment of human capital in the United States. This is misguided and will hurt U.S. growth and innovation, at a time when the global arms race for AI creates a vital need for the sharpest human talent and innovators.

We are professors who study and teach innovation-related topics at U.S. research universities. As immigrants to the United States from India and Panama respectively, we understand firsthand the sometimes painful discussions around H-1B immigration. Tensions around immigration routinely affect our academic institutions, our current students and former students now in industry. But there should be a lot of common ground on this polarizing topic.

STEM immigrants are creating substantial value in the United States. Immigrants play a significant role in entrepreneurial ventures in the United States and particularly startup innovation. Further, such immigrants are responsible for 23% of innovation output in the United States. This effect is in part based on policies that allow for foreign students to study and stay in the United States to work in startups.

H-1B immigration is like a natural selection process that benefits the U.S. immensely. Highly skilled immigrants in areas such as technology and medicine come hungry for hard work and full of ideas to better the world — to create new products, services and even markets as well as to cater to existing needs through more incremental improvement and optimization. Many of our best students are immigrants who are looking to stay in the United States and create work opportunities that would not be possible anywhere else in the world. In the United States, we recognize entrepreneurial success perhaps more than any other country. It is one of our greatest attributes as a society.

Nevertheless, we do have an immigration problem in the United States. The problem is that the distribution of benefits across the United States is highly skewed. Much of the wealth generated in terms of company creation and jobs has redounded to innovative clusters. But the idea to reduce the total number of H-1B immigrants by increasing the cost is exactly the wrong way to “solve” this problem — by dragging down the thriving parts of the economy rather than lifting up the rest.

To grow economic prosperity throughout the country, we need to offer more opportunities for more H-1B visa applicants. There are simply not enough trained U.S. nationals to take on the sort of labor required for the next wave of a tech-enabled industrial revolution.

Distributing the fruits of H-1B visa holders’ work more broadly requires a different approach than the U.S. has taken before. We should increase the total number of new H-1B visa recipients each year to 350,000 from around 85,000, with the additional visas apportioned across states so that locations like college towns — places like Lawrence, Kan., Gainesville, Fla., and Clemson, S.C., as well as cities such as Birmingham, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Boise receive sufficient numbers of H-1B workers. Visas could be allocated through a process akin to the resident-matching system for medical doctors, thereby sending workers to states where they would create greater value by filling economic and technological gaps. This infusion of labor would improve technological innovation in local economies and create local spillover effects in job creation and additional innovation.

Such immigration is necessary particularly now given a global push toward increased industrial policy, as China and others invest in AI and broader digital transformation. At a time when our national security is linked to technological innovation, it is shortsighted not to open ourselves to more immigration. If we do not, we will lose some of the best and brightest minds to Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Singapore and other countries.

Immigration is currently a volatile political issue in the U.S., as it has been at some other moments in the nation’s history. Although this is a country of immigrants, for people who feel insecure about pocketbook and cultural issues, continued immigration can feel threatening. As a percentage of people living in the United States, it has been more than 100 years since there were as many immigrants here as there are now. But as with past waves of immigration, productivity and transformation have followed.

This is particularly clear for H-1B visa holders, who create opportunities for people born in the U.S. and ensure the vitality of American innovation, security and democratic values. Increasing the costs of such visas would chill their use and reduce U.S. prosperity and innovation exactly at a time of great need.

Hemant Bhargava is a professor of business at UC Davis Graduate School of Management and director of the Center for Analytics and Technology in Society. D. Daniel Sokol is a professor of law and business at USC.

JUBA, South Sudan — South Sudan said Saturday it repatriated to Mexico a man deported from the United States in July.

The man, a Mexican identified as Jesus Munoz-Gutierrez, was among a group of eight who have been in government custody in the East African country since their deportation from the U.S.

Another deportee, a South Sudanese national, has since been freed while six others remain in custody.

South Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said it carried out Munoz-Gutierrez’s repatriation to Mexico in concert with the Mexican Embassy in neighboring Ethiopia.

The move was carried out “in full accordance with relevant international law, bilateral agreements, and established diplomatic protocols,” the ministry said in a statement.

In comments to journalists in Juba, the South Sudan capital, Munoz-Gutierrez said he “felt kidnapped” when the U.S. sent him to South Sudan.

“I was not planning to come to South Sudan, but while I was here they treated me well,” he said. “I finished my time in the United States, and they were supposed to return me to Mexico. Instead, they wrongfully sent me to South Sudan.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said that Munoz-Gutierrez had a conviction for second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

South Sudan is engaging other countries about repatriating the six deportees still in custody, said Apuk Ayuel Mayen, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

It is not clear whether the deportees have access to legal representation.

Rights groups have argued that the Trump administration’s increasing practice of deporting migrants to third countries violates international law and the basic rights of migrants.

The deportations have been blocked or limited by U.S. federal courts, though the Supreme Court in June allowed the government to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other than their homelands.

Other African nations receiving deportees from the U.S. include Uganda, Eswatini and Rwanda. Eswatini received five men with criminal backgrounds in July, and the Trump administration wants to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador earlier this year, to the southern African kingdom. Rwanda announced the arrival of a group of seven deportees in mid-August.

Machol writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time.

He said he would halt Russia’s war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel’s war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he’d persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days.

“The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things,” his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview.

Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached.

Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it’s not clear whether they ended the country’s atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven’t surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets.

It turned out that force of personality couldn’t solve every problem.

“He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “He often acts as if we’re the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We’re not.”

The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran’s nuclear project back for years, even if it didn’t end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself — much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this,” he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed.

The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration.

For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow.

“I believe he wants peace,” Trump said of Putin in February. “I trust him on this subject.”

But to Trump’s surprise, Putin wasn’t satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media (“Vladimir, STOP!”).

Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: “Nobody’s playing me.”

But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin’s good faith. “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along,” he said.

“I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, ‘Well, that was a nice phone call,’ and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,” Trump complained last week. “After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn’t mean anything.”

The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022.

So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had.

Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose “secondary tariffs” on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply.

He said he still hopes Putin will come around. “I’m not done with him, but I’m disappointed in him,” he said in a BBC interview.

It still isn’t clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. “I have no doubt that we will cope,” he said.

Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia’s two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both.

Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran — the goals he began with six months ago.

Despite his mercurial style, Trump’s approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said.

“There is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,” Schake said. “Alliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.”

Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: “He favors autocrats over democrats.” Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted.

The problem, Schake said, is that those principles “impede Trump’s ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn’t seem to realize it.

“The international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,” she said. “Trump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.”

Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump’s frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs.

“Tariffs are a form of economic warfare,” he said. “Trump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. … I don’t think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.”

Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don’t agree.

“It cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. “With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.”

That claim will take years to test.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — The United States sent five migrants it describes as “barbaric” criminals to the African nation of Eswatini in an expansion of the Trump administration’s largely secretive third-country deportation program, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday.

The U.S. has already deported eight men to another African country, South Sudan, after the Supreme Court lifted restrictions on sending people to countries where they have no ties. The South Sudanese government has declined to say where those men, also described as violent criminals, are after it took custody of them nearly two weeks ago.

In a late-night post on X, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the five men sent to Eswatini, who are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos, had arrived on a plane, but didn’t say when or where.

She said they were all convicted criminals and “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”

The men “have been terrorizing American communities” but were now “off of American soil,” McLaughlin added.

McLaughlin said they had been convicted of crimes including murder and child rape and one was a “confirmed” gang member. Her social media posts included mug shots of the men and what she said were their criminal records and sentences. They were not named.

It was not clear if the men had been deported from prison or if they were detained in immigration operations, and the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t immediately respond to requests for clarification.

Four of the five countries where the men are from have historically been resistant to taking back some citizens when they’re deported from the U.S. That issue has been a reoccurring problem for Homeland Security even before the Trump administration. Some countries refuse to take back any of their citizens, while others won’t accept people who have committed crimes in the U.S.

Like in South Sudan, there was no immediate comment from Eswatini authorities over any deal to accept third-country deportees or what would happen to them in that country. Civic groups there raised concerns over the secrecy from a government long accused of clamping down on human rights.

“There has been a notable lack of official communication from the Eswatini government regarding any agreement or understanding with the U.S. to accept these deportees,” Ingiphile Dlamini, a spokesperson for the pro-democracy group SWALIMO, said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

It wasn’t clear if they were being held in a detention center, what their legal status was or what Eswatini’s plans were for the deported men, he said.

An absolute monarchy

Eswatini, previously called Swaziland, is a country of about 1.2 million people between South Africa and Mozambique. It is one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies and the last in Africa. King Mswati III has ruled by decree since 1986.

Political parties are effectively banned and pro-democracy groups have said for years that Mswati III has crushed political dissent, sometimes violently.

Pro-democracy protests erupted in Eswatini in 2021, when dozens were killed, allegedly by security forces. Eswatini authorities have been accused of conducting political assassinations of pro-democracy activists and imprisoning others.

Because Eswatini is a poor country, it “may face significant strain in accommodating and managing individuals with complex backgrounds, particularly those with serious criminal convictions,” Dlamini said.

While the U.S. administration has hailed deportations as a victory for the safety and security of the American people, Dlamini said his organization wanted to know the plans for the five men sent to Eswatini and “any potential risks to the local population.”

U.S. is seeking more deals

The Trump administration has said it is seeking more deals with African nations to take deportees from the U.S. Leaders from some of the five West African nations who met last week with President Trump at the White House said the issue of migration and their countries possibly taking deportees from the U.S. was discussed.

Some nations have pushed back. Nigeria, which wasn’t part of that White House summit, said it has rejected pressure from the U.S. to take deportees who are citizens of other countries.

The U.S. also has sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama, but has identified Africa as a continent where it might find more governments willing to strike deportation agreements.

Rwanda’s foreign minister told the AP last month that talks were underway with the U.S. about a potential agreement to host deported migrants. A British government plan announced in 2022 to deport rejected asylum-seekers to Rwanda was ruled illegal by the U.K. Supreme Court last year.

‘Not a dumping ground’

The eight men deported by the U.S. to war-torn South Sudan, where they arrived early this month, previously spent weeks at a U.S. military base in nearby Djibouti, located on the northeast border of Ethiopia, as the case over the legality of sending them there played out.

The deportation flight to Eswatini is the first to a third country since the Supreme Court ruling cleared the way.

The South Sudanese government has not released details of its agreement with the U.S. to take deportees, nor has it said what will happen to the men. A prominent civil society leader there said South Sudan was “not a dumping ground for criminals.”

Analysts say some African nations might be willing to take third-country deportees in return for more favorable terms from the U.S. in negotiations over tariffs, foreign aid and investment, and restrictions on travel visas.

Imray and Gumede write for the Associated Press. Gumede reported from Johannesburg. AP writer Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.

GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, pushing back against comments from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement that would allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to work in the capital’s airport, training local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects.

But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she called a safe-third-country agreement. She said she reached a similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes of her trip.

Asked about Noem’s comments Friday during a news conference, Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement reached with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens of other Central American nations as a transit point on their way home.

Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, safe third country was discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement during President Trump’s first term in office. But “we made it clear that our path was different,” Arévalo said.

He did add that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to Nicaraguans who have been unable to return to their country because of the political situation there out of “solidarity.”

The president’s communications office said Noem had been given the ratification of the agreement reached through diplomatic notes weeks earlier.

During Trump’s first term, the U.S. signed such safe-third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed “safe.”

Perez writes for the Associated Press.

LONDON — The world may be rethinking the American dream.

For centuries, people in other countries saw the United States as place of welcome and opportunity. Now, President Trump’s drive for mass deportations of migrants is riling the streets of Los Angeles, college campuses, even churches — and fueling a global rethinking about the virtues and promise of coming to America.

“The message coming from Washington is that you are not welcome in the United States,” said Edwin van Rest, CEO of Studyportals, which tracks real-time searches by international students considering studying in other countries. Student interest in studying in America has dropped to its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, it found. ”The fact is, there are great opportunities elsewhere.”

There has long been a romanticized notion about immigration and America. The reality has always been different, with race and ethnicity playing undeniable roles in the tension over who can be an American. The U.S. still beckons to the “huddled masses” from the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The strong economy has helped draw millions more every year, with the inflow driving the U.S. population over 340 million.

Early clues across industries — like tourism, trade, entertainment and education — suggest the American dream is fading for foreigners who have historically flooded to the U.S.

Polling by Pew Research Center from January through April found that opinions of the U.S. have worsened over the past year in 15 of the 24 countries it surveyed.

Trump and many of his supporters maintain that migrants in the country illegally threaten American safety, jobs and culture. But people in the country legally also have been caught in Trump’s dragnet. And that makes prospective visitors to the U.S., even as tourists, leery.

Trump’s global tariff war and his campaign against international students who have expressed pro-Palestinian sympathies stick especially stubbornly in the minds of people across American borders who for decades clamored to participate in the land of free speech and opportunity.

“The chances of something truly horrific happening are almost certainly tiny,” Duncan Greaves, 62, of Queensland, Australia, advised a Reddit user asking whether to risk a vacation to the land of barbeques, big sky country and July 4 fireworks. “Basically it’s like the Dirty Harry quote: ‘Do you feel lucky?’”

Trump has married two immigrants

For much of its history, America had encouraged immigration as the country sought intellectual and economic fuel to spur its growth.

But from the beginning, the United States has wrestled with the question of who is allowed to be an American. The new country was built on land brutally swiped from Native Americans. It was later populated by millions of enslaved Africans.

The American Civil War ignited in part over the same subject. The federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers for a decade. During World War II, the U.S. government incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in 10 concentration camps. About two-thirds were U.S. citizens.

Still, the United States has always been a nation of immigrants, steered by the “American Creed” developed by Thomas Jefferson, which posits that the tenets of equality, hard work and freedom are inherently American.

Everyone, after all, comes from somewhere — a fact underscored on-camera in the Oval Office this month when German Chancellor Friedrich Merz gave the president the framed birth certificate of Trump’s grandfather, also named Friedrich, who emigrated from Germany in 1885. He was one of millions of Germans who fled war and economic strife to move to the United States in the late 19th Century.

There’s a story there, too, that suggests the Trump family knows both the triumphs of immigration and the struggle and shame of being expelled.

After marrying and making a fortune in America, the elder Trump attained U.S. citizenship and tried return to Germany. He was expelled for failing to complete his military service — and wrote about the experience.

“Why should we be deported? This is very, very hard for a family,” Friedrich Trump wrote to Luitpold, prince regent of Bavaria in 1905, according to a translation in Harper’s magazine. “What will our fellow citizens think if honest subjects are faced with such a decree — not to mention the great material losses it would incur.”

Trump himself has married two immigrant women: the late Ivana Zelníčková Trump, of what’s now the Czech Republic, and his current wife, Melania Knauss Trump of Slovenia.

Coming to America

It’s hard to overstate the degree to which immigration has changed the face and culture of America — and divided it.

Immigration in 2024 drove U.S. population growth to its fastest rate in 23 years as the nation surpassed 340 million residents, the U.S. Census Bureau said in December. Almost 2.8 million more people immigrated to the United States last year than in 2023, partly because of a new method of counting that adds people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons. Net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase in the most recent data reported.

Immigration accounted for all of the growth in 16 states that otherwise would have lost population, according to the Brookings Institution.

But where some Americans see immigration largely as an influx of workers and brain power, Trump sees an “invasion,” a longstanding view.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has initiated an far-reaching campaign of immigration enforcement that has pushed the limits of executive power and clashed with federal judges trying to restrain him over his invocation of special powers to deport people, cancel visas and deposit deportees in third countries.

In his second term, unlike his first, he’s not retreating from some unpopular positions on immigration. Instead, the subject has emerged as Trump’s strongest issue in public polling, reflecting both his grip on the Republican base and a broader shift in public sentiment.

A June survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 46% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, which is nearly 10 percentage points higher than his approval rating on the economy and trade. The poll was conducted at the beginning of the Los Angeles protests and did not include questions about Trump’s military deployment to the city.

‘Shaken their confidence’

The U.S. is still viewed as an economic powerhouse, though people in more countries consider China to be the world’s top economy, according to the Pew poll, and it’s unclear whether Trump’s policies could cause a meaningful drain of international students and others who feel under siege in the United States.

Netherlands-based Studyportals, which analyzes the searches for international schools by millions of students worldwide, reported that weekly pageviews for degrees in the U.S, collapsed by half between Jan. 5 and the end of April. It predicted that if the trend continues, the demand for programs in the U.S. could plummet further, with U.S. programs losing ground to countries like the United Kingdom and Australia.

“International students and their families seek predictability and security when choosing which country to trust with their future,” said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, which represents international educators. “The U.S. government’s recent actions have naturally shaken their confidence in the United States.”

Kellman writes for the Associated Press.