The Trump administration is floating a move that could strand international travelers at one of the country's busiest gateways, and the timing could hardly be worse.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this week that his office is "drawing up plans" to pull U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers from airports in so-called sanctuary cities. Newark Liberty International Airport is first in line.
Mullin's reasoning has nothing to do with airport security or staffing budgets. He wants to redeploy customs officers to help ICE agents at the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, where protesters have spent more than a week demonstrating over conditions for the roughly 300 people held inside.
What this means for your next flight
Here's the part that matters for your trip. Customs officers are the people who process you back into the country. Pull them out, and international flights can't legally land and unload passengers. Critics say those flights would be canceled instead of rerouted to another city.
Newark is no small target. The airport handled 24.5 million international passengers last year. And the threat extends beyond New Jersey. Mullin has named New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle as possible targets too.
Then there's the World Cup. The tournament final is set for July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, about 12 miles from Newark. Hundreds of thousands of international fans are expected to fly in through the region. Cutting customs at Newark right as the world shows up would be a self-inflicted wound.
The U.S. Travel Association, which met with Mullin last week, warns the economic damage would be severe. It estimates a Newark shutdown would cost $8 billion in annual international visitor spending and put nearly 50,000 American jobs at risk. The group adds that Newark's customs operations clear more than $30 billion in imported goods each year, so a stoppage would ripple out to shipping costs and store prices.
For now this is a threat, not a policy. But it's a real enough threat that anyone with international travel plans this summer should plan around it.
How to protect your summer travel plans if Newark shuts down
You don't have to wait around to become a bargaining chip in someone else's fight. A few moves now can save you a lot of grief later.
Route around Newark if you can. If you're flying home from Europe or Asia, look at clearing customs somewhere outside the named cities. The trouble is that most major East Coast gateways, including JFK and Philadelphia, are also on Mullin's list, so check your specific itinerary rather than assuming a nearby hub is safe.
Review your travel insurance now. Find out whether your policy covers government-caused disruptions. A "cancel for any reason" policy gives you the most flexibility, but it has to be bought early and usually refunds only part of your trip cost.
Pay with a credit card. If a canceled flight isn't refunded, the Fair Credit Billing Act lets you dispute the charge.
Stay subscribed to this newsletter. This story is moving fast. If you're holding a Newark ticket for later this summer, follow DHS announcements closely before you travel.
The takeaway: Don't book a new international itinerary through Newark, or any of the named "sanctuary city" airports, until the administration backs off this threat.
The last word on the death of the passport
I spent a sleepless night in Singapore this week worrying that my passport's spin through the washing machine had stranded me overseas, which got me thinking about how absurd the whole arrangement is.
We've built airports that scan your face, your fingerprints, and your travel history in the time it takes to clear a subway turnstile. But then we ask you to back all of it up with a 24-page paper booklet you can destroy with a cup of coffee.
Come on. The chip is the document, as I noted in Saturday's commentary. The pages are just wrapping.
Singapore figured this out, and now clears residents at Changi with nothing but their face, cutting screening times by 60 percent. If you can renew online, you should be able to carry the credential on the same phone that already opens every eGate on earth. Keep the booklet as a backup if it makes you feel better, the way some people still print boarding passes. But the day my face becomes my passport is the day I stop checking my back pocket in a panic.
Oh, and PS—I made it across the border with my passport and am continuing next week, when I fly to Bangkok.
Americans are warming up to AI travel planning. But there's one thing almost nobody will hand over.
You've probably already done it without thinking twice. You ask an AI chatbot to find a cheaper flight or ask it for a restaurant recommendation on your next trip. It spits out an answer in seconds, and you've shaved serious time off your planning.
That's the easy part. The hard question is what happens when you give AI your credit card.
A new survey from Human Security, a company that sells fraud-detection tools, asked more than 2,400 Americans across 48 states how they feel about using AI to plan and book travel.
The findings show a clear line in the sand. People love the help, but they don't love handing over their credit card information.
Let's look at where that line sits, because it tells you something about how to protect yourself this summer.
People trust AI as a research assistant, not a travel agent
The survey found Americans are most comfortable with AI when it sorts, compares, and suggests. Think narrowing down hotels, surfacing activities, or building a rough itinerary. That's the tedious stuff, and it's also the stuff where a bad answer costs you nothing but time.
A quick note from my personal experience: Many AIs are programmed to give you an answer with certainty, and that certainty can be wrong. When I gave Gemini the information about my damaged passport, for example, it basically told me I was stranded in Singapore. That turned out to be completely wrong.
The comfort level among travelers drops off a cliff when money enters the picture. According to the survey, 43 percent of respondents said they'd let an AI assistant book travel for them if it asked for final approval before paying.
Strip out that approval step, and the number falls to 12 percent
That gap tells an important story. Roughly four in 10 people will let a machine do the legwork as long as a human signs off. Barely one in 10 will let it run unsupervised.
When it comes to an AI, hesitation is smart
The survey's respondents listed their worries, and they line up with the consequences, not the technology itself. People aren't scared of AI. They're scared of what happens when it gets something wrong and there's no one to call.
That's a good sound decision. If an AI agent books a nonrefundable fare to the wrong airport on the wrong date, you're the one holding the reservation. The survey found that when people think responsibility should be shared after a costly mistake, they point to the company that made the tool, the user, and the booking platform. In other words, nobody actually knows who's on the hook, which is exactly why you don't want to find out the hard way.
There's also the data question. The survey found Americans split almost evenly on whether they want an AI assistant remembering their travel history and spending habits to personalize future trips. Half see the convenience. The other half don't love the idea of a company storing a running file on how and where they travel.
What this means for your summer trip
You don't have to swear off AI planning tools. But you do need to know where the guardrails are.
Keep a human checkpoint before any payment. The survey crowd has this right. Use AI to build the shortlist, then book it yourself. Never enable an "auto-book" feature for flights or hotels, even one that promises to stay inside your budget. The few dollars or minutes you save aren't worth losing control of the transaction.
Verify every detail before you click "buy." AI tools make mistakes with confidence, as I mentioned before. Check the airport codes, the dates, the passenger names, and the refund policy yourself. The AI may not catch a typo that costs you a change fee.
Pay with a credit card. This is the same advice that applies to any travel purchase. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, a credit card gives you the right to dispute a charge if the service isn't delivered. If an AI-assisted booking goes sideways, that protection matters.
Watch what you're feeding it. Be cautious about letting any AI tool store your payment information or build a permanent profile of your travel patterns. Convenience now can mean a privacy headache later.
And remember, an AI assistant pulling from the same booking sites you'd use isn't magic. Spot-check its "best price" against a fare you find on your own before you trust it.
The takeaway: AI is a fine co-pilot for the boring parts of trip planning. It's a terrible choice for the captain's chair. Let it research, let it compare and let it suggest. Then put your own hands back on the wheel before you pay.
Your turn
Are you thinking of changing your travel plans because of the "sanctuary city" threats? Have you turned over your travel planning to an AI yet? Our comments are open, and they're for humans only. (Hat tip to the late Keith Haring for inspiring the art in today's newsletter.)