In a little over two months, Neil Young is crossing the Atlantic for his first European tour in six years. In light of recent actions by the Trump administration, he’s worried he won’t be allowed back in once it wraps.
“If I talk about Donald J. Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminum blanket,” he wrote on the Neil Young Archives. “That is happening all the time now. Countries have new advice for those returning to America … If I come back from Europe and am barred, can’t play my USA tour, all of the folks who bought tickets will not be able to come to a concert by me.”
“That’s right folks,” he continues. “If you say anything bad about Trump or his administration, you may be barred from re-entering USA if you are Canadian. If you are a dual citizen like me, who knows? We’ll all find that out together.”
Young’s message comes after the Trump administration deported Venezuelan migrants it alleged were part of organized gangs, sometimes merely due to tattoos or clothes associated with the gang. In one case, makeup artist Andry José Hernández Romero was sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador despite there being no credible evidence he was part of a gang. His tattoo was in honor of his mother.
Others were deported merely for voicing their political beliefs, including Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts, who co-authored an op-ed for The Tufts Daily that asked the school’s president to divest school funds from Israel.
Young is worried he might meet a similar fate for voicing his views while overseas, even though he’s a dual citizen. “If the fact that I think Donald Trump is the worst president in the history of our country could stop me from coming back, what does that say for freedom?” he asked. “It seems to me that if you voted for Kamala Harris over Trump, that makes it possible for you to go to jail or be detained, punished in some ways for not showing allegiance to what? How spineless is that? Trump is not able to stand up to anyone who does not agree with his ideas?”
He ended his note by quoting the Pledge of Allegiance. “One country, indivisible, with Liberty and Freedom, for all,” he writes. “Remember that? I do.”