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Fortress America

GamesIndustry.biz's Weekly Update from 21/05/2003 contained the following paragraph:

Indeed, the whole event was marred only by the none-too-gentle ministrations of US immigration officials, who used an obscure part of the immigration laws to detain and then deport a number of British games journalists on the basis of their profession. The event organisers might want to take note; without foreign journalists, E3 would be a much poorer event, and the least they might have been expected to do was to warn registered foreign media about this regulation in advance. As it was, this unfortunate mishap left a sour taste in the mouths of many who attended from the UK, and not just those who were deported.
And now Reports Sans Frontieres tells of French game journalists with similar or worse problems. (GamesIndustry.biz later added some details on four UK journalists.

All of this is seriously reducing my interest in visiting the US.