US tourism industry faces drop-off as immigration agenda deters travellers

Westerners increasingly hesitant to travel to US out of fear of arrests and detentions as Trump enforces crackdown

A string of high-profile arrests and detentions of travellers is likely to cause a major downturn in tourism to the US, with latest figures already showing a serious drop-off, tourist experts said.

Several western travellers have recently been rejected at the US border on increasingly flimsy grounds under Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, some of them shackled and held in detention centers in poor conditions for weeks.