Escort Gigi Lenoir recently went viral for a chilling warning on social media.
asserted
Lenoir → go → media
A friend of hers in the sex work industry had been pulled aside at the U.S. border, shown printouts of her website, and banned from the U.S. for five years.
asserted
friend → pull → years
Facial recognition is out of control," Lenoir wrote, referring to sex workers who include pictures of their faces in public advertisements.
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who → write → advertisements
The tweet went viral and provoked a conversation among sex workers about digital safety.
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tweet → go → safety
Omg one of my friends was detained at the border and DENIED entry to the USA for 5 years.
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one → detain → years
She used to be face out and they basically had her whole website printed out and interrogated her.
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website → use → her
As a former State Department official who handled immigration, I have been trying to find out if the government is really using facial recognition to find the identity of foreigners who have done sex work online.
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who → handle → work
An American sex worker told me a story of her border interrogation that suggested she was flagged by a computer program.
uncertain
she → tell → program
When I asked, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) didn't deny that the agency was using facial recognition to identify sex workers.
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agency → ask → workers
Others seem to elide a bigger structural change.
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Others → seem → change
While the law bans people from coming to the country under a vague definition of immorality, it also allows authorities to give special talent visas to popular OnlyFans models.
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authorities → ban → models
Ordered to crank up enforcement on every metric, and given new tools of dubious utility, officers start going after easy targets: unpopular radicals and "low" women.
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officers → order → targets
The American sex worker I spoke to was a dual citizen returning home to the U.S. from the other country where she holds citizenship.
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she → speak → citizenship
As a U.S. citizen, there was no way the government could deport her.
uncertain
government → be → her
But she was pulled into secondary screening at the border and could not get a straight answer for why she was being held.
uncertain
she → pull → answer
The other people in the waiting room were single Middle Eastern men, families and couples from Latin America and Africa, and women with a "bimboesque, influencer look" from her country, she says.
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she → say → country
After a long wait, a man in a suit questioned her without identifying what agency he was from.
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he → question → agency
Despite her U.S. citizenship, the man insisted on speaking in her other country's language, as if he was testing her fluency.
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he → insist → fluency
He searched her bags and asked about her travel patterns, source of income, and exact addresses.
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He → search → income
Based on my experience in government, what happened at the border suggests that she had been flagged as a sex worker by a computer program.
uncertain
she → base → program
CBP doesn't deny that it's doing this, though it didn't definitively confirm it either.
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it → deny → it
"U.S. Customs and Border Protection uses technology—including biometric tools—to support lawful border security operations, verify traveler identity, and facilitate legitimate travel consistent with applicable law and policy.
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Customs → use → law
Any inspection or enforcement action at the border is based on the totality of the circumstances and conducted consistent with CBP authorities, privacy requirements, and civil rights and civil liberties protections," a CBP spokesperson told me.
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spokesperson → base → me
"Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, an alien who is coming to the United States to engage in prostitution, or who has engaged in prostitution within 10 years of the date of application for admission, may appear to be inadmissible to the United States.
uncertain
who → come → States
This isn't a situation in which the U.S. government is looking at combating sex trafficking or sexual exploitation seriously or systemically.
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government → look → trafficking
If anything, the Trump administration is pulling officers off sex trafficking cases to do other immigration enforcement work.
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administration → pull → work
There are several overlapping and vague definitions of "prostitution" and "commercialized vice" in U.S. immigration law, based on a perceived threat to public morality or the idea that sex workers themselves are bad people who shouldn't come here.
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who → be → morality
They apply even to people who did fully legal sex work in their own countries.
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who → apply → countries
The same immigration system is fine with the production of pornographic media, treating workers in those industries like any other entertainer, unless their work crosses the line into "commercialized vice," a term that is undefined.
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that → treat → vice
This vagueness has led courts to make sex worker entry bans easy to overturn.
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bans → lead → courts
One of the most famous cases in immigration law, Matter of Hranka, was about a Canadian citizen deported from the U.S. in 1975 for engaging in sex work in Detroit.
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One → deport → Detroit
The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that the government should grant visitor waivers for people with this kind of past on even the most minimal grounds.
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government → rule → grounds
Ironically, the system has actually started rewarding the most successful OnlyFans performers (among other social media influencers) with O-1 visas for "extraordinary ability."
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system → start → ability
Some immigration lawyers told the Financial Times earlier this year that social media influencers make up more than half their clientele, simply because followers and likes are easy metrics that can be used to prove "talent" as an entertainer.
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that → tell → entertainer
The woman who described her border experience to me took it as par for the course for the realities of sex work and the hypocrisy of government enforcement.
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who → describe → enforcement
"Girls that are high-end and citizens serving exclusively rich clientele have a way different experience to girls working the streets to live," she says.
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she → serve → streets
The woman also described the conversations that sex workers have as they struggle to figure out the limits of digital safety.
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they → describe → safety
"A lot of these girls are really just mostly normal girls following the formula set before them by other girls.
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lot → follow → girls
They blur their face out because it's what all the other girls do, and to some degree, it might offer some protection for sure, say, from a stalker maybe," she says.
uncertain
she → blur → stalker
The tools measure faces' proportions, even with blur.
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tools → measure → blur
…and 11 more, not listed.
The Aporia
