TSA Shoe Removal Rule Ends After 19 Years

Hi, I'm Mark Murphy and this is TravelTube.com. I'm here with an update for you. One of the breaking news items we've had this week is that you no longer have to take your shoes off at U.S. airports. It's only been 19 years that rule has been in place.

Just to refresh everybody's memory on why it started: there was a guy flying from Paris to the U.S. who tried to light his shoe because he had an explosive device embedded in it. Passengers took him to the ground, the device never went off, and about three years later they imposed that rule on all of us. So unless you had pre-check, you were dropping your shoes and walking through security.

It never made any sense to me, and here's why it was ridiculous. If I flew back from Mexico—which I've done probably 50 times since then—I never had to take my shoes off. You're flying into the United States, but Mexico didn't require me to take my shoes off.

So a plane coming from Paris, which has nothing to do with TSA, had a guy who tried to light a shoe on fire because he had an explosive device embedded in it. But when flying outbound from the U.S. or within the U.S., we all had to go through security and take off our shoes.

The threat originated outside the U.S., where there is no TSA—they have their own security. You'd ask yourself, "Hold on. You're making me take off my shoes, but all these planes are coming in from overseas, and most of those countries, virtually all of them, didn't have that requirement." How is that making us any safer?

I guess if I'm flying on a plane in the U.S. with everybody having to take off their shoes, that's good. But coming in from overseas, they don't have to. Did they have some amazing technology? No, it's a typical government response to something—I guess to make you feel a little bit better about things.

The good news is they're rolling it out. Airports and dealing with flying still sucks, and everybody knows it. It's gotten better because airports now have better amenities and restaurants when you get delayed, but it still sucks. Let's face it—there's nothing fun about it. It's a means to an end. So that headache is going to be gone shortly, which is fantastic. It only took our government 19 years to figure it out.

Personal Story: European Visitor's Concerns

Here's an update from my Fourth of July weekend. My nephew came to town with his girlfriend—they live together in Europe. The girlfriend is from France, and she said that her brother's girlfriend was alarmed when she heard that she was going to take the risk of traveling to the United States.

What was she worried about? She was worried because she thought she could be arrested and deported to that prison in El Salvador. I'm laughing because it's so ridiculous, but that's what she thought was a possibility.

Media Coverage and Travel Warnings

The question is, why did she think that? The answer is the MSM/media and social media. Just search "travel warnings to the United States" and read about the concerned people. For instance, a Canadian travel journalist was fearful about coming to the U.S. because "we're not sure what's going to happen." She's a travel journalist! What professional who covers travel would worry that they're going to get arrested and confined if they're traveling here legally and doing everything legally?

Now if you're an active criminal and you have arrest warrants, yeah, I'd probably suggest you not try to come into the U.S. But that didn't stop the previous administration from letting 20 million people into our country, none of whom were vetted.

Immigration Policy Discussion

The irony of all this is thinking that it's not safe to come to the U.S.—not because you're going to be hit by a bullet in a random drive-by shooting (although in some cities that continues to be an issue), but because our country has decided that an open border isn't what the people want. That's why we voted the way we voted.

There are people that aren't happy about that because there are people in the business world who are happy with illegal immigrants in our country because they can exploit them for cheap labor. And there are people that think there should be no borders, which is ludicrous, because then you don't have a country.

There are plenty of people in France, the UK, and Ireland who feel exactly the same way—that if you want to come to their country legally, no problem. We're going to vet you and see if you qualify. What doesn't really get reported is that 95 out of 100 asylum applications in the United States get rejected, and those people get sent back because they're not refugees seeking asylum from anything other than seeing an economic opportunity to live in a country like the U.S.

Over the last four years, some have gotten free hotel rooms, food, phones, and stipends to live on even though they broke our laws coming here.

Crime Statistics and Safety

I find it ironic that somebody in France is concerned about travel to the United States when they have their issues with immigration that has really upended their country. At the same time, crime rates in cities like New York are down in some parts of the city and overall as much as 70%.

You're telling me that it's less safe to come here because we're deporting criminals who are here illegally? Anybody who comes to our country illegally has broken our laws. I don't care if it's a misdemeanor—you still have a deportation order and get deported. And if you decide to come back, like this Canadian woman the media is covering, who 25 years ago entered our country illegally, got deported back to Canada, then decided to commit a felony by coming back again—the media's in an uproar because they're going to send her back to Canada.

She has three kids, and I'm sorry, but you broke our laws twice. You committed a felony. You were a citizen of Canada, not the United States. You're going to get returned. You've been living here for 25 years, but you still did something that you knew was absolutely wrong. She could have waited 10 years, re-applied, and come back through the proper process, but she didn't.

Media Literacy and Information Sources

You're getting fed information from your media outlets which is not correct. I would suggest listening to Scott Adams' podcast—he's the Dilbert creator who gives a very balanced view of what's going on. You've got to understand that in this world, we have borders we have to deal with. We had 20 million people over four years come into our country illegally from over 165 countries.

What do you do about that? Well, we decided through voting in a new president that we didn't want to have an open border. So that's getting fixed. As a result, crime is down massively in cities like New York. Crime rates are lower today in New York than they were over the last four years.

Remember the 2020 BLM riots and COVID lockdowns? Some of those lockdowns continued for over a year. In some countries, they locked people down off and on for over a year. They told you that if you wanted to be outside, you were limited to 15 minutes and couldn't walk with anybody else within six feet of you. What did we learn about that? It was nonsense.

Social Media Misinformation

You go on social media and listen to some person saying things like they're taking people and kidnapping them off the street, putting them on flights, and deporting them, but then they're taking them out over the ocean and dropping them from the plane, and bodies are washing up. You believe that? Maybe you have mental illness if you believe that.

There's probably still 20% of the population that thinks the craziest stuff is actually happening. It's not. These are probably the same people driving with a mask while they're alone in their own car.

When I see these people on TikTok—some are celebrities—saying "Oh my God, I'm so sad," it's like, why weren't you sad when they were trafficking people, young girls, young boys, hundreds of thousands gone missing? Why weren't you sad when they signed over 250 of these kids to a single address as if they were going to their uncle's house? Why weren't you sad when they dropped DNA testing to prove that you were actually the relative of this kid and weren't just trafficking them?

Travel Industry Perspective

A word of advice, especially for people in the travel industry: if you want to prevent wars and social discord, meeting people from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds and from different countries is one of the best ways to build bridges. That's why I love the travel industry, and that's why I love the fact that I've been able to go all over the world.

At the same time, I find it oddly strange how many people in travel actually perpetuate some of these stories. I see posts that are unhinged, that have no bearing in reality. It's the equivalent of taking a gun in the travel business and shooting yourself in the head because you're damaging the business and the people you rely on.

LGBTQ+ Travel Safety

It's ironic that there are people who would say the U.S. might not be safe for LGBTQ travelers now. These are the same people saying "LGBTQIA+ we support Gaza and Palestine and Palestinians." I'm thinking to myself, you do? Because they don't support you.

There are organizations that will tell you where it's safe to go in the world when it comes to your sexual orientation. The beautiful thing about the U.S. is that we literally have a live-and-let-live attitude. If you're only hearing from a small percentage of people crying out for attention, you're not understanding that we're not concerned about you being who you are.

The vast majority of Americans don't care about your lifestyle or sexual orientation. We have a problem when you demand that we live our lives in a way to accommodate whatever it is that you're dealing with or aligned with. We're live and let live—we don't care. You're not going to get harassed in this country if you come here as a visitor and you're gay.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is probably the second largest gay community in the entire country outside of San Francisco. It's a huge gay population. Nobody cares. There's an area called Wilton Manors—they call it the "gayborhood." I go there and have breakfast at this great outdoor cafe. It's a great little part of Greater Fort Lauderdale. Nobody cares. Fort Lauderdale is one of the top five destinations to visit this summer, even though it's hot. We have the beach—it's beautiful, it's stunning. The water's 86 degrees.

I'm in New Jersey because I wanted to get out of the heat, but I'm not getting in the water in New Jersey. It's still like 70 degrees. I'd rather swim in a pool, but I don't have one here at the beach. So I look at the water—it's great. But in the end, nobody cares.

Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Do yourself a favor: get off the mainstream news. Stop listening to people with mental illness. When a country says there's a travel warning and it's being reported on your news, go back and look up what your news was saying about COVID five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, two years ago. Go back and look at the nonsense they put you through "for your own safety."

Go back and listen to them talk about social distancing and how they insisted you wear masks. These are the same people talking to you today about whether it's safe to go to a country where we're exporting criminals who came here illegally.

How many countries could stand to have 20 to 25 million people just show up in four years? That's like adding a new state every year. The problem with adding a new state in the U.S. is that state doesn't provide any economic gain for our country—they bleed the country. You're seeing that in the UK, you're seeing it in France, you're really seeing it in Ireland. They're taking resources from the citizens who were born there and giving them to people who break their laws. It makes zero sense.

If you actually believe these travel warnings, I feel sorry for you. I hope that you can free your brain from the indoctrination and brainwashing it has absorbed. The best way to do that is go back and see what the news talking heads were saying years ago and see what they're saying today about this new topic. Ask yourself, if you were going to fact-check them with real data—for instance, on COVID—and you realized they were full of nonsense, and you realized that the governments telling you to be careful about travel are the same governments that told you if you wanted to keep your job, you needed to get an experimental drug injected into your body.

You probably know somebody who's had a vaccine injury. I was very thankful I sold my company in 2019 because even though I had COVID, they would have forced me to be vaccinated to show up at a conference or anything else.

I've yet to see anybody in the travel industry—any of these leading cruise lines, river cruise lines, or destination marketing organizations who required vaccination to travel to their countries—come out and say, "You know what? I'm sorry, we were wrong. We shouldn't have done that."

For an industry that prides itself on inclusiveness to ban people from traveling to your country because you won't take an experimental shot—my body, my choice went out the window, bodily autonomy went out the window, inclusiveness went out the window. People that spent years talking about being more inclusive are the same ones that excluded you if you wouldn't take the experimental shot.

Let that sink in. Have a great week. We'll be bringing you more news, more podcasts, and more insights on TravelTube as the summer unfolds. Hope you have a great day.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability while preserving the original content and conversational tone.