UK Sex Workers Deported from USA

If Twitter has taught us one thing these last few weeks/months, it’s that the hostility towards UK sex workers at international borders is increasing. We were all scratching our heads as to how face-hidden workers were being stopped, detained and deported from the USA to the UK. After all, they were more often than not travelling for a holiday not work, had nothing incriminating on them and had wiped all adverts and hidden their escort website before stepping foot on US soil. How and why was this happening?

We now know, thanks to an increasing amount of evidence (namely the photos waved under the noses of detainees, and the information they are given by border force officials) that at least ONE way they are getting our info is via sex work advertising websites that insist upon us providing government ID and face verification photos to be listed. The operators of these websites are either willingly giving/selling our data including our passport/driving licence photos to the US government, have been forced to, or they have been hacked and the data passed/sold on.

If you want to travel to the USA in the future (and Canada, with which it reportedly shares intel), it is no longer safe to sign up to sex work websites that insist on seeing ID or face verification photos. It’s possible, in the future, this warning will apply to other countries too.

The data presented to detainees while they are being held and interrogated – something which lasts many hours, is degrading, frightening and mentally damaging – has included government IDs provided to escort advertising websites recently and all the way back to nearly a decade ago.

It is not just in-person sex workers who are being targeted, a variety of sex workers have been stopped at the US border and deported including cam girls and online content creators.

If you have already given your ID to a website for sex work, you should think very carefully about travelling to North America. If you do travel, you should research and understand up to date advice and your rights before you travel.

The scale of the issue is unknown, but one thing we do know is deportations of UK based sex workers have picked up pace in recent months.

Even if you have never given ID, you should be very aware of facial recognition software and its capabilities. This is another tool used at borders and even partial face photos can be matched using this software. If you are a sex worker wishing to travel anywhere (not just North America) now or in the future, consider ensuring your whole face has a VERY HEAVY blur, or paint over your face in photoshop or similar. A light blur in which your facial features can still be seen is not safe.

As technology moves on this situation is only likely to get worse, and I would highly recommend you start future-proofing yourself now, as much as you possibly can. And if you simply cannot afford not to use the websites that insist on your ID etc, at least you are forewarned over the potential issues they can cause you, and can plan your travel accordingly. Turning up to a border after hours on a plane and being denied entry is a deeply traumatic event and not a risk to be taken lightly.

Further reading

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34p5a/a-virtual-reality-sex-worker-was-denied-entry-to-the-us-for-prostitution
https://www.maggiesto.org/resources